Report To The Nation Truth About Delhi Violence

REPORT TO THE NATION :

TRUTH
ABOUT
DELHI VIOLENCE

BY

AMIYA RAO
AUROBINDO GHOSE
N. D. PANCHOLl

FOREWORD BY V. M. TARKUNDE

CITIZENS FOR DEMOCRACY

REPORT TO THE NATION :

TRUTH
ABOUT
DELHI VIOLENCE

BY

AMIYA RAO
AUROBINDO GHOSE
N. D. PANCHOLI

FOREWORD BY V. M. TARKUNDE

CITIZENS FOR DEMOCRACY

Published by

CITIZENS FOR DEMOCRACY
223, Oeen Dayal Upadhyaya Marg,
New DelhM 10002.

January 1985

Contributory Price— Rs. 6. 00

Printed at
ASHOK PRESS

CONTENTS

PdlTAO

rages

Foreword

(iv)

Ackno s lodgements

(vi)

An Explanatory Note

(vii)

Demands

(via)

TntrOi) uof ion

(ix)

CHAPTFR I

Prelude to the Violence

1

CHAPTFR IF

The Carnage

5

CHAPTER !II

Pattern : A Method in

the Madness

17

CHAPTER IV

Nature of Violence

26

CHAPTER V

Police Lawlessness

31

CHAPTER VI

Was it a 'Communal' Riot 7

42

Annexure I

FIR No. 174 or Mongolpuri Police

Station

48

Annexure II

FIR No. 176 of Mongolpuri Police

Station

50

Annexure III

FIR No. 250 of Sultanpuri Police

Station

53

FOREWORD

A good deal of material has appeared in the Press on the large-
scale rioting which took place in Delhi after the assassination of
Mrs. Indira Gandhi. A very good report has also been published
under the joint auspices of the People's Union For Democratic
Rights and People's Union For Civil Liberties. The present
report is the result of an extensive investigation carried out by a
different set of social activists. It has the advantage of having been

prepared when passions have cooled down and when the events
could be considered in retrospect.

Two lessons can be drawn from the experience of the Delhi
riots. One is about the extent of criminalisation of our politics and
the other about the utter unreliab lity of our police force in a critical
situation.

Although there was a communal clement in the violence which
erupted in Delhi after the tragic death of Mrs. lndiraGandhi.it
could hardly be described as a communal riot. It was, in the first
place, an entirely one-sided affair. The Sikhs did not play any
aggressive role in the Delhi riots. They were always at the receiving
end. They tried in a few cases to defend themselves, but the defence
was wholly ineffective. On the other hand, there were a large
number of Hindus in every locality who tiied to save their Sikh
neighbours at considerable risk to themselves. The rioting cannot
also be attributed, except marginally, to the feelings generated by
the dastardly murder of a popular leader. As this report emphasises,
no Sikh was killed in Delhi on October 31, 1984, although the pass-
ing away of Mrs. Gandhi became known by about 10.30 A.M. on
that day. It was on 1st November and the two succeeding days that
a massacre of hundreds of Sikhs and the burning and looting of
their shops and houses took place. The rioting was organised by a
number of unscrupulous politicians who are habitually associated
with anti-social elements and down-right criminals. That is the
reason why looting was so extensive and why the killing of Sikhs
was attended with unparalleled brutality. Scores of Sikhs in Delhi
were literally burnt alive. It is for the top leaders of the ruling

party to consider the ways and means by which the process of crimi-
nalisation of politics within its ranks can be reversed.

Complaints of police partiality were voiced after all the com-
munal riots which took place in recent years. In the case of Delhi
riots, however, the extent of police partiality exceeded all limits.
Instead of trying to protect innocent victims, the police, except in a
solitary instance, were either utterly indifferent or positively hostile
to the Sikhs. The experience of the Delhi riots justifies the view
that the law enforcement agency in the country has itself become, to
a considerable extent, a lawless force. It is essential that the Govern-
ment should devise and carry cut a long-range plan to convert the
police force into a law-abiding and law-enforcing agency.

The heinous offences which took place during the Delhi riots,
including looting, arson and murder, were all perpetrated in broad
daylight. Particulars of some of the offenders are well-known, and
the names of many others can be found if a proper investigation is
carried out. There is, however, a noticeable apathy in doing this
work. Although over two and a half months have elapsed after the
riot, not a single case against any offender appears to have been filed
before any Delhi Magistrate. The Delhi Administration will be justly
blamed if these heinous offences go unpunished.

— V.M. Tarkunde

New Delhi!:119. 1.1985

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We remember with great sorrow Dr. Alfred D' Souza, Director
of Indian Social Institute, New Delhi, who passed away suddenly.
His untimely death is a great loss to the democratic movement. We
record our gratitude to him for his interest, guidance, encourage-
ment in starting and continuing with this investigation. We are
extremely thankful to Prof. Lotika Sarkar, Mr. Chanchal Sarkar,
Dr. Jose Kannanaikal of the Indian Social Institute and Prof. Dalip
S. Swamy, Head of the Deptt. of Business Economics, Delhi Uni-
versity for their co-operation and suggestions in preparing this
report. A large number of fiieids and organisations have helped in
various valuable ways, namely Mrs. Nirmal, Messrs. Ashok Panda,
Ranjan Dwivedi, Tejinder S.ngb, Laxmi Kant Gaur, K.M. Singh,
Vishnu Gupta, Ashok Bharti, Rajat K. Das, Prem Chand, Nagrik
Ekta Manch, students of Vidya Jyoti, numerous students of Delhi
University and staff of Delhi University.

We received immense assistance from the news and articles
published in the Statesman, Indian Express, Jansatta, Times of India,
Hindustan Times, Patriot, Surya India. We are grateful to various
journalists who fearlessly repotted the news of the Delhi carnage.

AN EXPLANATORY NOTE

1. The names of all persons accused of having planned or
executed or participated in the various incidents of vio-
lence described in this Report have been withheld, except
where they have been specifically mentioned in a FIR lodged
at a police station or in an affidavit before a court of law.
Wherever the names have not been disclosed, they have
been substituted by cross-marks, i.e. xxxx. We are prepared
to disclose all the names of the accused in the event of a

2. The reference to castes and communities in the Report
does not imply any prejudice or aspersion to them but
merely constitutes a faithful record of the evidence given
by the survivors relating to the identification of the
assailants. Furthermore, this reference does not imply
that all persons belonging to the specified castes and
communities participated in the violence, rather that
some of the persons who participated were identified by
the victims as belonging to them.

3. This Report mentions the "Nanaksar Report" in several
places as one of the valuable sources of information. The
"Nanaksar Report" "Nanaksar Report", sponsored by the
Nagrik Ekta Manch, New Delhi, derives its name from the
fact that it is based on interviews with inmates of the relief
camp in Nanaksar Ashram located in the Trans-Yamuna
area of the Capital.

DEMANDS

A number of voluntary organisations and responsible citizens
made the following demands immediately after the violence :

1. Immediate appointment of a judicial commission to en-
quire into the role of the administrative machinery and of
members of the ruling party in perpetrating this catas-
trophe on the innocent Sikhs of Delhi ;

2. Dcterrant punishment to all those found guilty ;

3. Adequate compensation to and rehabilitation of widows
and orphans and other victims ;

4. Overhauling the police machinery with a view to make it
a law-abiding force ;

5. Restoration of the people's faith in the secular character
of the State.

We fully support the above demands. We place this report
before the Nation so that justice may be done and shattered faith
may be restored.

INTRODUCTION

On the recent violence in Delhi which continued unabated
and unchecked for four long fearful days (October 31 to November
3,1984), after the dastardly assassination of Mrs. Indira Gandhi,
good reports and articles have already come out and are coming
out. But many more investigative and analytical reports are
required to obtain a fuller and more complete understanding of the
enormity of the tragedy.

Some of the reasons which prompted the writing of Ibis report
were the stories— which were being circulated as facts and generally
accepted as true. These said, to pick out a few : (i) the violence
was purely communal— a Hindu versus Sikh affair, (ii) it was a
spontaneous outburst of people's anger to teach the Sikhs a lesson,
and (iii) the killing of the Sikhs had begun on the 3 1 st October
itself, accompanied by all kinds of rumours, from celebration by
Sikhs to poisoning of Delhi's drinking water, and arrival of Jhelurn
Express filled with Hindu corpses.

These were not at all true, but we realised that unless these
were refuted with irrefutable evidence, the real truth that it was
neither communal nor a spontaneous outburst of unbridled rage of
the people but organised with the blessings of the party in power, will
be lost. After interviewing hundreds of victims talking to several
people who had gone through perhaps the worst communal violence
in history during the partition of India and some police officials,
even connivers with the killers, we have come to the conclusion that
th e violence was not communal in character. One and all have given
us to understand that it was sponsored by the Congress-I members
and there was nothing communal about it. We have also gathered
conclusive evidence of that involvement.

As regards the spontaneity of the orgy, some people appeared
to be angry and they did burn down a couple of Gurudwaras,
damaged the property of the Sikhs and manhandled them but did
not kill a single Sikh on 31st October. It is important to remember
that in Delhi all this exhibil ion of people's anger v. as on the 3 1st
October and in a restricted area round about the Al) India Institute

of Medical Sciences where Mrs. Gandhi's body bad been kept. In
the States also there was similar evidence of spontaneous outburst
of emotion! againUonl. the 31st£ October but there was no killing of
any Sikh on that day neither in the Congress-ruled Stales nor in the
non-Congress States. Clearly people's anger had not reached such
intensity as to bum a man alive and to gloat over his anguished
cries or his burning flesh. It is amazing that the people's anger
instead of going down, should have become intensified because
everything began to happen from the morning of the next day,
November 1.

We have shown in this report that several meetings were held
all over Delhi— Central, Outer and Trans- Yamuna area— in the late
hours of the 3 1st October to give final touches, as it were, to the
plan already prepared with meticulous care, with an eye to every
minute detail that nothing was left out to successfully exterminate
the Sikhs. It was as ft that brigades were going to attack an enemy
territory. From collection of kerosene and incendiary material
for dousing the men before they were burnt, to collection of killers
both from villages outside the areas of attack as well as from among
the more amenable i.eighbours ; from fixing the hour of attack to
be launched simultaneously everywhere in Delhi in the forenoon
between 9 ami 1 1 A.M. to organising the attack and deciding if it
should be repetitive or two-pronged as in a war depending on the
size of the mob ; from identifying the jhuggis and houses of the
Sikhs from amongst the forest of jhuggis and houses occupied by
thousands of non-Sikhs to disarming the Sikhs and dissuading them
from taking out their Pi abb at Pheri ; from fixing the sequence
of the targets of attack to floating the rumours— everything
was done with amazing precision. Gurudwaras were first
to be attacked in every area of Delhi according to the plans,
because they were supposed to be the arsenals of Sikhs and also the
symbol ol their collective faith and courage, so they had to be
destroyed first. Once these places of worship were in ashes the
Sikh houses were looted and set ablaze, then the men were first
humiliated by cutting off their hair and shaving off their beard and
finally they were delivered to the flames alive ; later their women
were molested and raped and some were killed also. The rumours
were floated in three distinct phases. On October 31, it was to

(xi)

excite and provoke the anger of the people against the Sikhs that the
rumour was floated that they were rejoicing. Secondly, on November
i, after Gurudwaras were burnt down and killing of the Sikhs had
taken place, for preventing any sympathy, the second rumour
was spread that the Sikhs had poisoned Delhi's drinking water
supply. In the third phase, on November 2, since killings had to
go on in the Resettlement Colonies, the rumour that the Jhelum
Express had come from Punjab loaded with Hindu bodies was
floated.

That there was an impeccable pattern according to which the
violence erupted and that ihe mob like disciplined soldiers kept to
that model and implicitly obeyed the direction of their masters, the
Congress-I functionaries— we feel certain ; and all the evidence
collected from various persons, voluntary agencies' reports and
interviews also point to the same conclusion.

We have also collected some valuable FIRs relating to the
violence which were lodged by the police themselves at various Police
Stations without mentioning the names of the culprits. These FIRs

We feared that with the passing of time and the dispersal
of refugees and other unforeseen events crowded in, many valuable
facts will be irrecoverably lost and the desire to probe deep into
the cause, the nature and the extent of the violence, so that one
could reach atleast the fringe of the truth became compelling and
so this report had to be completed. In fact the investigation had
already started from the very first day of the violence and through
various reports of eye witnesses, answers to questionnaires by victims
as well as neighbours in 19 areas, several new facts came to light.

With all this wealth of material, we have come to certain
broad conclusions : —

1. The violence was not spontaneous but organised by
members of Congress-I.

2. It was not a communal riot although it has endangered
communal amity as its aftermath.

3. It was primarily meant to arouse passions of the majority
community— Hindu chauvinism— in order to consolidate
Hindu votes in the coming election,

m

II was the old colonial 'divide and rule' policy setting one
religion against another. The State had forgotton its
role of the protector. Instead, it became the collaborator
to violence against a minority.

As we said earlier, there is scope or rather need for many mo-e
reports to come out. The number of the dead for instance is yet
tn be ascertained. Even in the Vietnam war, the number of the
dead is known but in this 4-day war sponsored by the Government's
own party and against one selected section of the country's minori-
ties, none lenows for certain how many Sikhs have lost tbeir lives.
Those who were dragged out of trains and killed are still not
counter! as dead by their relatives : they are still waiting for them
to come back, hoping and waiting and hoping against all hopes
some are on the verge of eoParse. Bhagat Singh, for instance,
is still searching frantically for his son whom he had sent back from
Hard war to Delhi on November!. And Bhagat Singh could not
be the only one.

Women recognised as recentlv widowed are 1300 in number ;
most of them young, the majority illiterate, once dependent on their
husbands, absorbed in their homes and families, who had never gone
out to work, are today alone fncmg a merciless world ; with kids to
look after, no husband to fall hack upon, nn home to go back to, no
Gurudwara or Granthi to turn to for solace ard those agonising
cries of a burning man piercing her heart— she is like a lost soul ;
some have lost their minds, manv are ill after rape. Can a paltry
sum of a few thousands sanctioned as compensation (that too has
not reached manv^ compensate the loss of a human being. Then there
are the kids— 4000 orphans as said by Lt. Gen. J.S. Aurora, many
of whom have seen their fathers fhev ndorcd. dragged out and burnt
alive, their mothers they rushi-d to in trouble, beaten up and raped.
These kids with frightened and bewildered eyes, will they ever come
out of their trauma and be normal happy jolly children again ?
This is only one aspect of human life t!-e violence has thrown up-
broken homes, shattered children 8r.d old desolate parents. Someone
someday will write upon.

Another aspect, no less alarming, is the mass exodus of the
Sikhs from Delhi— the n r. bcr cruld re rr>v.r:ere rour.d fO.CCO.
Some have left for Rajasthan, some for Punjab, some are migrating

abroad creating a vacuum here and imbalancing the economy in
Delhi ; the charpoy stringers of KalyaDpuH, carpenters and house
painters of Sultanpuri, the electricians and mechanics— those wizards
with rundown cars, scooters and household gadgets are already in
short supply. The daily advertisements suggest that even some of the
well-to-do Sikhs arc exchanging their Delhi property for property
in Punjab. These are just a few aspects picked up at random which
no doubt will be studied by sociologists and economists one day.

There is a feeling of insecurity haunting those who are still
here, for the criminals whom many had identified and bad men-
tioned their names in various complaints made to various autho-
rities and police, are still roaming around freely and holding out
threats.

Can the Delhi violence be looked upon in isolation ? Or is
it a part of a deteriorating system ? The secular foundation of the
nation has seldom been under greater stress. Under the facade of
secularism and democracy the conditions prevailing here are not
very different from those in a Fascist State. The Black Laws and
repressive measures are striking at the very roots of basic freedoms
and fundamental rights. Secret torture of under-trials inside jails,
the tremendous increase in the power of the police, the growing
exploitation of the poor, the nexus between the politician, his
musclertten and the bureaucrats, are all portents of a Fascist State.

The violence, the terror, the brutal killings have been let loose
on the Sikhs. Only yesterday, it was the Sikhs who were the victims,
tomorrow it could be you or me. The warning had been given
a long time back by a great lover of human rights, Martin
Neiraoller :

"In Germany, the Nazis came first for the Communists and
I did not speak up, because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak up, be-
cause I was not a Jew.

Then they came for trade unionists and 1 did not speak
up, because T was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics. I was a Protestant
and so I did not sepak up.

Then they came for me, and by that time there was no
one left to speak for anyone".

CHAPTER t

Prelude to the Violence

Indira Gandhi, the Prime Minister of India," was shot by two of
her security guards at 9.18 A.M. on October 31, 1984. She was rushed
to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (in South Delhi). Her son
Rajiv Gandhi, was away in West Bengal at that time and he returned
to Delhi at about 4 P.M. President Zail Singh who was away in the
Middle East, returned at about 5 P.M. and at 6.55 P.M. Rajiv
Gandhi was sworn in as Prime Minister of India.

The media focussed on the fact that the two assassins were Sikhs.
As if by design, the entire blame of this grave tragedy was put on these
two Sikh individuals and later transferred to the entire Sikh
community.

The first incidents, any where in the country, started in Calcutta.
According to the Statesman of November 1, a Sikh was beaten up at
11 A.M. near Writers' Buildings and one more Sikh was attacked in
the Kidderpore area around the same time. A Sikh was assaulted in
front of the Tea Board at about 1.30 P.M. The national
Press reported that Congress-I workers and volunteers ran amuck in
different parts of Calcutta from the forenoon. The Army was called in
to control the situation and it had taken charge of the city by 2.30
P.M.

In Madras city, mobs took over, smashing shop windows, for-
cing shopkeepers to close down, and burning two buses of the Adarsha
Vidyalaya run by the Punjab Association.

In Madhya Pradesh, angry mobs attacked shops and petrol
pumps belonging to Sikhs in Jabalpur and Indore. The Army was put
on the alert.

In Uttar Pradesh, witness to terrible incidents of arson, loot, and
killing from November 1 onwards, particularly in Kanpur, few inci-
dents were reported for October 31. Huge crowds gathered in the
streets on getting the news of Mrs. Gandhi's assassination. Shops were
closed. But that was all '

2

REPORT TO THB NATION : TRUTH ABOUT DELHI VIOLBNCB

In Orissa, Congress-I workers attacked Sikhs in Bbuwaneshwar
and set a private truck on fire. In Kalahandi where much burning and
killing took place from November 1, nothing violent happened on
October 3!, but crowds collected in the Gandhi Chowk in front of
the Polic Station and the S.P's office. Also continuous Ramayan Path
was begun.

In Delhi, incidents started in the afternoon of October 31. !
Most of these incidents were concentrated in South Delhi, and that
too in the vicinity of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences where
Mrs. Gandhi was admitted after being shot. Majority of the Sikhs in
Delhi had always been supporters of the Congress-I, and many of
them, as shocked and grieved as anyone else, had also reached All
India Instititute of Medical Sciences on that tragic morning of October
31. It was only in the late afternoon that their manhandling began.
Even the President's car was stoned when it slowed down at the entr-
ance of the hospital. Sikhs were dragged out of buses near the AHMS
by large mobs and beaten. At about 4 P.M. some looting of shops
and burning of vehicles started at South Extension and 1NA market: as
reported, it was at the observed instigation and signal of a Congress-1
■member of the Delhi Metropolitan Council.

•

The following incident outside the INA market at about 4 P.M.
is significant. A Sikh youth's turban was snatched by a small crowd
of 30-35 persons. They tossed his turban once, and jeered as it came
down. They tossed it a second time and as it came dowu, set it ablaze.

the INA market came out and whisked away the
i: he was not harmed.

Then the mob moved to the Safdarjang Aiiport Flyover. They
spotted a car with an elderly Sikh gentleman inside. They stopped
the car, dragged out the Sikh, abused him, roughed him up, hamme-
red the car, but let the Sikh go without any harm to his life.

Around that time, a mail van driven by a Sikh was burnt near
the Jor Bagh-Safdarjang Airport crossing. The Singh Sabba
Gurudwara at Laxmibai Nagar was set on fire just as the Gurudwara
at East Kidwai Nagar, next to All India Institute of Medical Sciences,
was burnt down. Two private buses and two shops in the same area
were set ablaze. The police watched passively. In the walled city,
mobs looted shops belonging to Sikhs, and set timber shops
and trucks on fire. By 4 P.M. shutters were down on most of the

PRELUDE TO THE VIOLEN6B

3

shops in the Slianker Market, Punchkuin Road, Karol Bagh, Sarojini
Nagar and various other shopping centres in Delhi but there was no
general phenomenon of loot and arson in the city, as markets
remained open in certain areas like Greater Kailash-H.

One significant scene was enacted at the All MS at about
5-5.30 P.M. Rajiv Gandhi came out with folded hands after seeing
his mother's dead body. H.K.L. Bhagat followed him. A huge
crowd had collected and were chanting slogans of 'Indira Gandhi
Amar Rahc' and 'Khoon ka Badla Khoon se'. Bhagat came out and
wis reported 10 have scolded the crowd, "What is the point of
asembliug here ?"

There is not a single known incident of any Sikh having been
killed or burnt alive on that day. A rumour concerning Sikhs was
doing the rounds on October 31 -of Sikhs celebrating Mrs. Gandhi's
assassination by distributing sweets, or dancing the 'bhangra', or by
lighting lamps and bursting crackers.

Unsuspectful of any plan against their community, Sikhs ia gene-
rat ventured out of their houses for various errands on the morning
of November I . A large number of Sikhs unmindful of any personal
danger had gone to Teen Murti House in the early hours of November
ljust like others, to pay their last homage to their departed leader. As
observed on T.V., a large number of Sikhs were seen in the crowded
queues which were passing in front of the dead body of Mrs. Indira
Gandhi in the early hours of November 1. However, the sight of
the Sikhs from those queues completely disappeared within an hour
and a half of that morning. By that time the plan had been put into
operation.

Looking back and comparing the events of the 31st October
with the carnage which followed from November 1 onwards, it
appears that the 3 1 st October occurrences were isolated, sporadic,
and emotional in nature while those which started on November 1
and continued for a full three days were extremely systematic, planned
and organised in character: based on cold political considerations. In
retrospect, it is perhaps not implausible to suggest that between the
time of Mrs. Gandhi's assassination on the morning of October 31
and the time of her son Rajiv Gandhi's accession as the new Prime
Minister in the evening of that fateful day, three crucial decisions
were taken by someone somewhere in logical sequence (however

4 REPORT TO THB NATION TRUTH ABOUT DELHI VIOLENCE

perverse the logic may appear in a secular, socialist, democratic
republic) :

1. Rajiv Gandhi must succeed as the new Prime Minister *

2. Elections must be held forthwith to cash in on the
'sympathy' factor in favour of Congress-I ;

3. Sikhs as a community must be taught a lesson and
demonstratively so— this was felt necessary to consolidate
the Hindu public opinion swaying towards Indira Gandhi
and her party after the Army action on the Golden Temple
in June. The situation changed dramatically after the
assassination. The Hindu community's confidence in the
ability of the ruling party to give protection to the Hindus
against the "militant" Sikhs would have been shattered,
the Hindu votes would have swung towards the
Opposition, if nothing whatsoever, was done to suggest
immediate "relribution" and "badla" for her assassi-
nation.

So something appears to have been done.

CHAPTER II

The Carnage

While on 31st October, violence in the Capital was confined
mainly to areas in South Delhi, and round about the AIIMS, next
morning it spread like wild fire all over Delhi. As the Press reported,
violence occurred in all the urban zones of Delhi— Centre, East,
West, North, South— and even spread to the rural areas of North
Delhi.

In the Central areas, the most affected localities were Karol
Bagh, Chandni Chowk, Paharganj, Janpath, Connaught Circus,
Sadar Bazar and Gurudwara Rakab Ganj.

In the East, violence occurred in various Trans-Yamuna
colonies, such as Gandhi Nagar, Shahdara, Trilokpuri, Kalyanpuri,
Vinod Nagar, Pandav Nagar, Gamri, Bhajanpura and Nand
Nagari.

In the West, the serious trouble spots were Mongolpuri,
Sultanpuri, Moti Nagar, Naraina, Patel Nagar, Inderpuri, Punjabi
Bagh, Paschim Vihar, Tilak Nagar, Hari Nagar and Janakpuri.

In the North, some of the worst incidents occurred at Ashok
Vihar, Jehangirpuri, Gulabi Bagh, Kashmere Gate, Kingsway Camp,
and Vegetable Mandi of Azadpur.

The worst affected areas in South Delhi were : South Extension,
Safdarjang Epclave, Kalkaji, Khan Market, Greater Kailash,
Sarojini Nagar, Maharani Bagh, Defence Colony, Nizammuddin,
Bhogal, Hari Nagar Ashram, NOIDA, Okhla Industrial Estate,
Kotla Mubarakpur, Panchsheela Enclave, Gulmohar Park, Chitta-
ranjan Park, Lajpat Nagar, and Vasant Vihar.

Hundreds of Gurudwaras were set on fire. Mobs tried to
attack even the Gurudwara Rakab Ganj near Central Secretariat and
Sheesh Gaoj Gurudwara at Chandni Chowk.

Shops owned by Sikhs were looted or set on fire indiscriminately
at various places, such ; as at Azadpur or at Nehru Place near Kalkaji.
A big cloth shop, S.M. & Sons, just next to the Khadi Gramodyog
in Regal Building in Connaught Ciicus was set ablaze as was the,
nearby Marina Hotel.

6 REPORT TO THE NATION : TRUTH ABOUT DELHI VTOLFNCl

A number of cinema halls owned by Sikhs were reduced to
ashes such as the Janak Cinema at Janakpuri, Deep at Ashok Vibar,
and Chanderlok in Chittaranjan Park.

Even schools were not spared from arson and destruction such
as the Guru Har Kishan Public School in Vasant Vihar, two of
its branches at Sarojini Nagar and Loni Road, the Mata Jai Kaur
School at Ashok Vihar, and the Takshila Public School at
Loni Road.

Vehicles appearing to be owned by Sikhs and taxi stands
manned by them were destroyed.

The scene at Lohia Hospital on the evening of Thursday,
November l.was an indication of what was happening in the
city. Men with stab wounds, pellet injuries, Jathi abrasions and
others who had been stoned and beaten up were being brought
in every minute. Five people had been brought in dead and as many
died later. In one ward alone (ward No. 10), the register showed
that 1 14 men had been brought in till 5 P.M.

Some Sikhs had been brought in from the railway stations. All
were dragged out, kicked, and stones lying on the railway track were
used to assault them.

All traces of the existence of an effective law and order
machinery disappeared as mobs ran riot. The police appeared to be
by and large unwilling to handle the situation and the Fire Brigade
telephone brought little response. Senior police officers refused to
give any authoritative information. No part of Delhi was trouble
free. All hell, it appeared, had been let loose.

After visiting several localities spread all over Delhi— places as
far apart as, for instance, Nizammuddin and Jehangirpuri— and
interviewing a large number of survivors and their neighours, we
find that :

I. Systematic violence, as distinct from sporadic, had erupted
in the Capital on November 1 between 9 and II O' clock
in the morning;

II. The initial target of attack was the Gurudwara— the sup-
posed arsenal of the Sikhs and the symbol of their collective
faith and courage— followed by loot, arson and killing of
the Sikhs : first the men, particularly youths, then members
of their families;

THB CARNAGE

7

III. The duration of violence differred as between the Centre
and the Periphery ; in centrally located areas of the Capital,
for instance, it' lasted from morning till evening of
November 1, while in more inaccessible Resettlement
Colonies of Outer and and East Delhi it lasted much longer
—between 48 to 72 hours.

Below are the details of some of the localities which were
especially examined. These details are classified according to the
date, time, target and duration of the violence.

(a) Jehangirpuri Resettlement Colony (Blocks A, C, D, E, EE, G, I,
J and K) :

Before the violence erupted in Jehangirpuri proper on November
1, it began at about 9.15 A.M. at Azadpur near the Sabzi Mandi
where a crowd looted 8 trucks laden with fruits parked in front of a
Sikh motor mechanic's shop and then burned these down as also
the shop. Swelling up in strength the crowd then proceeded
to Jehangirpuri, where at around 10 O'clock it first attacked the
three Gurudwaras and burnt them one after another, subsequently it
started looting and burning the shops, a factory, a petrol station,
a number of trucks, scooters and houses all belonging to the Sikhs.
Gathering momentum, the violence continued till 6 O' clock in the
evening till all the Sikhs they could seize had been killed. A Munici-
pal Councillor, xxxx, was seen inciting the mob. Several persons
involved in the violence were recognised by the survivors. One xxxx
who resides in K Block had a list of Sikh bouses, and once the houses
were identified, they were set on fire, the men hiding there were
dragged out, beaten up. severely and then killed. The violence
continued sporadically till November 3 when the Army arrived and J
rescued the survivors.

(6) M

On November 1, at about 10.15 A.M. a crowd of men led by 8
to 10 village leaders collected in front of the Congress-I office ; they
had come from the direction of the Flyover after having earlier burnt J
down 2 Sikh factories and a house on their way to Mongolpuri. Inside ]
the Congress-I office sat 50-60 men getting ready to go to Teen Murti
House for 'darsban* of the late Prime Minister. The leaders stopped
them from going to Teen Murti House, instead they were found mov- .

ft REPORT TO THE NATION : TRUTH APOUT DELHI VIOLENCB

ing towards the Gurudwara at Block F which they attacked and burnt
down. By then Congress-I sympathisers were brought down from the
nearby Pooth village in a DTC bus and the crowd was about 200
strong. Round about 1 1 A.M. the second Gurudwara was also attacked
and burnt down. When 4 houses belonging to the Sikhs were being
attacked, the Sikhs resisted with their talwars. The crowd retreated,
went back to the Congress-1 office and soon the local Congress leader
went rushing to the Mongolpuri Police Station to complain
against the armed Sikhs. The police suddenly became active and
came down. The Sikhs were arrested and were brought to the
Police Station, were disarmed there and ordered to go back to their
homes. On the way each one of them was slaughtered. The crowd
by now was 40O-5CO strong.

Mr. Gurdecp Singh, President of the Singh Sabha Gurudwara,
Block R, Mongolpuri, has given a vi"id account of how his two
brothers, Mr. Kulwant Singh and Mr. Rattan Singh, were killed
and his sister-in-law raped on November I, in his FIR (No. 176
dated November 11) lodged with the Mongolpuri Police Station.
The following persons — Kalia (a scooter driver who lives in Gali
No. 6), Seva Ram (a kerosene depot dealer), Shankcr, Sambhu and
his brother, 2 persons whose father is a vegetable vendor and
Goverdhan (of Gali No. 4)— attacked his brothers with arras, dragged
them out of the house, assaulted and injured them grieviously, poured
kerosene oil or some other inflamable substance and burnt them
alive. Afterwards, Shanti (a tailor who resides in Gali No. 5,
Block O, Mongolpuri) accompanied by 4 others (whose names are
not known but they can be identified) criminally assaulted Mrs.
Devinder Kaur, wife of Mr. Kulwant Singh, under duress and
threat of murder. Mr. Gurdip Singh has given the names and
nddressrs of the 'murderers and rapists' in his FIR but none of them
have been apprehended upto now.

(c) Budh Vihar :

According to Mr. Piara Singh of Budh Vihar: "On 1.1 1. 1984 at
12 at noon, Nishan Saheb (flag) of the Gurudwara was thrown
down and Gurudwara's property looted, safe and other things taken
away. Then, after looting the houses of the Sikhs and setting them
afire, they went back. About 3000-3500 people were there. After
that the situation calmed down.

THE CARNAGE

"At night, they came again. At about 9.30 P.M. they were
beating up a man named Jiti. I had earlier asked my father
to go to a oearby house of a Hindu brother. My father and Mokhar
Singh's father had gone to a neighbour' bouse. Leaving Jiti crying
and sobbing, about 50-60 people rushed to the house where my
father was hiding himself. The Hindu brother of that house asked
my father to leave the house. My father ran towards the other
side. Some people saw him running. They hit him on the head
and dragged him to the street. There about 40-50 men beat him
up with lathis. My father became unconscious. They left two men
with my father so that if any one would turn up to save him they
would beat him. The two men had lathis and rods. Rest of the men
went towards the Nala and shouted, "Is there any son of a snake ?
Bring him out." After some time, some people came and threw down
the dead body into the Nala. Where they beat him, there blood and
only blood was to be seen. At 1 1 O'clock, we came out for patrol-
ling which was started by the members of our locality. I gave up
my sleep and started working with them. After sometime, I was
surrounded by some people who said that I should be killed because
I am a son of a Sikh. One man pitied on me and said that I should
be freed because I never visited a Gurudwara, People left me.

"In the morning, the same man who saved me the night before
came to tell me that danger was still there and that 1 should run away.
I set out at the same time. A voice came from behind, "A sardar is
going. Catch him. Beat him." I ran towards the other side where I
saw a man going by a bicycle. Sitting on his cycle I went to a
relative's house in Rani Bagh and when the camps started, I came to
the camp at Shakur Pur."

Another account regarding Budh Vihar is provided by Mr.
Mohinder Singh, a resident of G-l Gurudwara at Budh Vihar. He
does Katha and Path (recite the prayers and explain their meanings).
His son, Satnam Singh, who has been killed, was the priest of the
Gurudwara. In the words of Mohinder Singh : "On the morning
of the first November, we did not take out the procession (Pra-
bhat Pheri) that we had to take out on the occasion of Guru
Nanak's birthday, as we were grieved at the sad demise of our
Prime Minister, Mrs. Indira Gandhi. In Phase-IJ, the recitation of
Guru Granth Sahib had started at Kartar Singh's house. We went

iO RBPORT tO THE NATION j TRUTH ABOUT DELHI VIOLENCE

there. My duty was from 9 A.M. to 11. A.M. I gave my duty. At
11. 30, .too much noise started coming. The family was asked to termi-
nate the recitation. We stopped. Kartar Singh and I hid ourselves
in some Hindu brother's house. At about five in the evening, many
people came there and shouted that the Sikhs be brought out. Some
people came in and dragged out Kartar Singh. Then they started
beating him badly. Ladies started shrieking. They asked us to go. We
went out after climbing the wall. Hiding ourselves in the bushes,
we reached the Gurudwara at one at night. The Gurudwara, we saw,
was wholly burnt down and the walls had collapsed. We went to
Mr. Bakshish Singh's house and hid ourselves there. Next day, my
son got up and went to the Gurudwara. People saw him there and
burnt him alive. After that I hid myself in Mohinder Singh's house.
There were four persons. On 3-1 1-1984 at 4 O' clock many people
came and killed Joginder Singh and Mohinder Singh. I and one
other person remained safe. After that, hiding myself I reached
Shakar Pur Camp."

(d) Sultanpuri Resettlement Colony :

On November 1, round about 3 P.M. the A-4 Block in
Sultanpuri was attacked by a 200-strong mob. They were seen coming
from the direction of Mongolpuri. The timing of the attack here
had to be different from the morning, as in all other areas, to
afternoon because the killing and looting in Nangloi and
Mongolpuri and Budh Vihar took a much longer time than planned.
The pattern, however, was followed as elsewhere : the mob destroyed
the Gurudwara first, then burnt the Granthi, then the looting began
and the arson, and finally the male Sikhs were dragged out and killed.
The destruction of this A-4 Block must have been total for the
attack continued till past midnight, and after an inter-mission at
about 4 A.M. the orgy continued again, unabated till 9 A.M. on
November 2. After destroying A-4 Block the mob was reinforced with
people from nearby villages, jhuggis, resettlement colonies and
neighbouring Blocks. Congress-1 leaders like xxxx and local goondas
like xxxx and xxxx from C-2, and the kerosene supplier xxxx from
xxxx and police officials xxxx and neighbours xxxx and XXX could
be identified by the survivors from P-l Block. The killers
were from outside^Gujars, jamadars and Bhangis— backed and
used by Congress-I ringleaders, local goondas and police. On
November 2, the C-4 Block was attacked by a huge mob in the

11

morning. The Sikhs were dragged out and beaten mercilessly. Some
of them came out from other Blocks and in self-defence brought out
their swords. The police were informed. Arriving promptly, they
disarmed the Sikhs, arrested some, shot a number ol them and order-
ed the rest of them to go back to their Blocks. Immensely encouraged,
swollen in numbers, the mob attacked the Sikhs, pulled them out,
doused them with kerosene, burned them alive, with the active encou-
ragement of the police. The destruction was systematic; shouting 'no
seed of a Sikh would be allowed to grow' the mob did not spare even
the little boys. After the C-4 Block, the A-2 Block was also
attacked and men burnt alive. The number of widows in Sultanpuri
alone is 144. The duration of the attack was, perhaps, the longest in
this colony lasting three full days.

As elsewhere, the carnage followed a very definite pattern. First,
the houses of the Sikhs were identified; their names ascertained
from the ration shops; the oil supplier had the kerosene and other
inflammable material ready for distribution; killers were got together
both from outside as well as from the neighbourhood; weapons used
were iron rods, daggers and axes. The killings were followed by
extensive looting and arson; what was new in this colony was the
manhandling and in certain Blocks raping and abduction of young
women and girls. The date was adhered to and also the target. As
everywhere the survivors mentioned the Congress-I functionaries by
name being behind the violence.

(e) Kalyanpuri Resettlement Colony :

On November 1, at about 9.45 A.M. it Was reported in the
Gurudwara at Block 3 i that a Sikh had been killed near Chand
Cinema; the Sikhs assembled there, got nervous but decided to
defend the Gurudwara; a little later— round about 10 A.M., a 200-350
strong crowd was seen coming along the road leading to Block 33; it
reached the Gurudwara at Block 36 in no time and attacked it.
Most of the Sikhs trying to defend it were hacked to death and the
Gurudwara was set on fire. The crowd then surged towards the
residential area where 9ome of the Sikhs bad fled; on the way the Sikh
shops which had already been identified were looted and burnt; then
the mob rushed towards the Sikh houses which also had been identi-
fied earlier and marked. The Sikhs resisted the attack and trying tq

12

REPORT TO THB NATION: TRUTH ABOUT DELHI VIOLENCB

save themselves stood on the roofs of their houses; some of them
accompanied by their Hindu neighbours went to Dr. Ashok, their
Congress-I Municipal Councillor for help; he refused and would not
even allow them to use his telephone to call the police. By that time,
the crowd had swelled up to 5C0 and had rounded Block 13 ; instead
of breaking open each house in that Block they made holes
on the back wall of the houses and entered the rooms in large numbers,
overpowering the Sikhs, killed 32 of them and looted and burnt
their houses. Then they went to Blocks 12 and 11 and killed 6 more
men there and burnt their houses. Violence continued till the after-
noon of November 3, when the dead had been cremated and no other
evidence of death was left; except in the silence of death and the
charred remains of wood where once houses had stood. And there was
Nanaki with her four tiny kids showing us her one precious posses-
sion—the single blood-smeared finger of her husband who had been
burnt ahve before her eyes and his hand slashed off so that they could
grab the gold ring he still had on his finger.

(f) Trilokpuri Resettlement Colony :

The violence began on November I around 9.45 A.M. A
crowd of 400-500 saw a Sikh on the main road. The scooter of a
passerby was stopped, petrol was taken out and the Sikh was soaked
in petrol and burnt. At that time, in front of the main road outside
Shri Guru Singh Sabha Gurudwara of Block 36, two policemen were
seen. A lecturer resident of Mayur Vihar, who got down
from a DTC bus at the corner of Trilokpuri and walked
the distance to his house, approached the policemen and requested
them to call more policemen to protect the Sikhs from the crowd
which was big and determined. The policemen then moved away.
When the policemen disappeared, the crowd attacked the Gurudwara,
killed six Sikhs including the Granthi of the Gurudwara and his son
who were trying to defend it and put them to the fire,, using kerosene
and tyres. The Gurudwara was in flames within minutes. The chief
assailant was one whose mother is an important functionary of the
local Congress-1 unit. The crowd then surged ahead on the road to
Sector 32 from two directions. By 11 A.M. the crowd reached the two
corners of Sector 32. Some persons tried to pacify it without
success. XXXX of Congress- 1 was apparently leading the crowd on
the side of the open fields, where transmission towers are located. On

THB CARNAGE

13

the other side is located a Mosque, which was occupied by many per-
sons some of whom were identified as local sweepers. The brickbats
started from the Mosque, the Sikhs tried to defend from their roof
tops. The crowd from the side of the open field was deterred because
five houses of Muslims sympathetic to Congress-I stood as buffer, their
members trying to appeal for peace. Four policemen near the Mosque
did not intervene. Meanwhile a crowd from Chilla Gaon, which is
about half a kilometer in the east, had attacked the Gurudwara of
Block 32 near the Balmiki Temple. The Sikhs there defended it till
3.30 P.M. At that time two Sikhs were seen running towards the open
fields, crossing the barbed wire and hiding themselves in the tall grass.
The crowd set the field on fire at several corners. There was no way
left to those Sikhs and they were burnt alive.

As soon as the Chilla Gaon crowd burnt the Gurudwara and
surged towards Block 32, the resistance collapsed. All male members
were killed; except six, one of them an old man of 65. Women and
children were forced out of the houses and the killed persons were
burnt with cots and kerosene. Some were dragged out and houses
were set on fire. 190 houses in five rows were burnt, nothing remained
inside. Human hair and blood stains could be detected even on 1 1th
November. The unofficially estimated death toll is 450 but the
official figure is 95.

Some girls were picked up by villagers from Chilla Gaon.
On 7th November, 6 girls were recovered by the local police. After
4 P.M. on the 1st the crowd had swelled to 2000, the residents of
neighbouring Blocks had also joined in those nefarious activities. But
some Muslims of Block 32 as well as of other Blocks saved some Sikh
males. Our eye-witness Joginder Singh was saved by Kadir Ahmed
of Block 32. Joginder Singh escaped at 5 A.M. on 2nd morning, after
shaving his beard and trimming his hair and dressed up as a goonda.
He ran away to his relations in the city and returned on 7th November
and reported to the police.

The riot continued unabated till it stopped in the afternoon
of November 3. There was not much then to do either.
The picture was one of utter desolation, everywhere there was the
stench of blood and rotten flesh and dead bodies were strewn all over,
piles of burnt ba»r Jay by their side, It was tbc day of dogs and
vultures.

14 REPORT TO THE NATION: TRUTH ABOUT DELHI VIOLENCE

(g) Hart Ntgar Ashram (New Delhi) j

Violence began round about J 1 O'clock in the morning on
November 1; a huge mob over 10C0 strong split into two and pro-
ceeded to destroy simultaneously the Bala Saheb Gurudwara and the
Sikh pocket in the Shalimar Theatre area. The Gurudwara was
badly damaged, most of the houses on the Bala Saheb Gurudwara
Road were reduced to ashes; a young man was dragged out of his
house and doused with kerosene and was burnt alive on the road.
His 80 year-old mother has gone off her mind. In Shalimar Theatre
45 to 50 trucks, cars, scooters, 2 buses and shops, 8 houses with all
their belongings were set on fire. Today the survivors have been redu-
ced to paupers. A Government contractor of electronics and his two
young sons were beaten to death. Harbhajan Singh, a truck repairer,
was dragged out of his house in Sunlight Co'ony, his thigh was cut off
first and then he was thrown to the flames. For three days, dogs could
be seen sniffing at the charred remains. But for the protection Hindu
neighbours gave to the Sikh young men— many more would have been
butchered. Two women gave birth to premature infants, they
also were taken care of and sent to Jivan Nagar Hospital.

*

Congress-I leaders, particularly XXXX, the Municipal Council-
lor and his cronies XXXX and XXXX were active. A public carrier
XXXX supplied tons of pebbles which were used to stone the build-
ings—even to-day the houses show big holes. The construction
labour also joined in the game of brick batting.

What stands out is the behaviour of the Police— all appeals to
them to control the mob fell on deaf ears; one of them was heard
telling an old woman of over 70 who had asked him to get a little
milk for an infant "yes. yes feed it for half an hour, we are going to
finish off your infants" (Adhe ghante ke liye dudh pillao, tumhare
bacchon ko katenge).

The violence which began in the morning, stopped at night on
November 1, lasting about 8-10 hours. On November 2, the Army
was posted there and several people were rescued. And this happened
not in far off colonies across the Yamuna but right inside the Capital,
hardly 3 kilometres from the Rashtrapati Bhawan.

(fa) Nizammuddio :

Roundabout 10 O'clock in the morning of November J,
violence erupted in Nizammuddin; 86 trucks owned by Sikhs and

THE CARNAGE

15

their houses were burnt down. Sikh taxis in the taxi stand were also
set on fire. Coming inside the residential area the mob set on fire the
house of a Sikh in <C Block. There is little doubt that the house
had been identified earlier. The mob by then 1 000 strong, marched
to Bhogal and beat to death six Sikhs on the Flyover in presence of
20 policemen who just looked on. The mob was joined by white
kurta-pyjama clad young men who came in two buses. fn a big Barat
like procession preceded by an oil tanker and followed by a police
jeep, the crowd passed through Bhoga! Market and burnt any number
of cars, scooters, looted Sikh shops on Jangpura Road and damaged
the Bhogal Singh Sabha Gurudwara. The Hindu residents prevented
it being burnt down, they were afraid that their own houses would
catch fire if the oil tanker had been used to douse the Gurudwara
building for setting it ablaze. Five policemen were seen drinking tea
brought to them by XXXXX, XXXX, and XXXX, all of whom were
identified by the Khalsa of the Gurudwara as being bad characters
of the locality.

-

(i) Kalkajl :

Eye-witness report of November 1 by a student who travelled
by Mudrlka Bus from Punjabi Bagh to All MS, then to Katkci'
jt, starting at 9.30 A.M., reaching Kalkaji by II AM.:

"At 9.30 A.M. on November I , when I boarded the Mudrika
Bus from Punjabi Bagh in order to go to AIIMS/Safdarjang Hos-
pital, the atmosphere seemed to me to be rather quiet and
peaceful. But as soon as the bus reached Raja Garden, a few goonda-
looking characters led by a white kurta dad man jumped into the bus,
and started looking for Sikh passengers. Since there were no Sikhs in
this bus, it was allowed to proceed undisturbed. At Naraina on the
way, I saw a few men dressed in kurta pyjamas, beating a Sikh
young man mercilessly. The Sikh youth in order to save his life, ran
into a nearby sweet-shop but he was not allowed to enter. All this I

could see clearly from the bus when I reached Kalkaji at 11

A.M. (on November I) 1 noticed that in quite a few places shops had
been looted and doors and windows had been smashed. A few
policemen, some of whom were armed, stood silently near Gali No.
14, Gobindpuri. In fact the policemen were occassional^ making
provocative and irrigative statements.

REPORT TO THE NATION: TRUTH ABOUT DELHI VIOLENCE

"At 11.30 A.M. on November 1, I was sitting and chatting at a
friend's place in Kalkiji DDA colony when we heard a big noise.
Coming out, we saw a lady advancing towards us shrieking very lou-
dly, the same lady whom I had earlier seen shouting and shrieking at
Kalkaji. "Burn the Sikhs, kill them, then only the dogs will learn
what can be the result of murdering the leader of the nation." On
asking one learnt that she was a well-known local activist of the Con-
gress-1. She v/ent away shouting. On her two sides, were walking cer-
tain people who looked like professional gangsters and who were arm-
ed with iron rod. and latbis, etc. As the Congress-I lady left, some of
the bad characters put the local Gurudwara ablaze. One person had
some explosive material in his hands which he started throwing
successively. The mob took about half an hour to do all this. When
they got convinced that the Gurudwara had burned, they went away;
about half an hour later when the local people felt that the bad chara-
cters had gone away, the non-Sikh people got together and, women
and youth alike, they started taking out things from inside the
Gurudwara and saved some of the valuables."

CHAPTER lit

Pattern : A Method in the Madness

A clear and distinct pattern of the violence emerged on analysing
the various reports and interviewing a number of survivors. There
was a method in the madness that overwhelmed Delhi after the
assassination.

A. Meetings on 31st October Night :

There is evidence that in several areas local Congress-I leaders
held meeting on the night of October 31st and these preceded attacks
and killings of the Sikhs.

-

(a) In Vinod Nagar (East Delhi) according to a survivor Ram
Singh (name changed), a taxi driver, a prominent Congress-I local lea-
der of Vinod Nagar called a meeting in the evening of list October
which was attended by xxxx, xxx (Bhaiswala), xxx (a known smuggler)
and a few others; the meeting went on till midnight. These men along
with 200-250 residents attacked his house early in the morning of
November 1, broke down the door with iron rods and seeing all three
of them (Ram Singh and his 2 sons) still sleeping, xxx told his friends
tojpour kerosene on them and burn them to death. Ram Singh woke
up, took out his kirpan and leapt out through the broken door — xxxx
stood back and all the others fled. A Hindu neighbour from Himachai
Pradesh helped him to escape.

Surjit Singh— a Sevadar of a local Gurudwara in Vinod Nagar
area (Nihang Singh Gurudwara, Pandav Nagar)— had left his house
early in the morning and thus escaped death but his wife (Tej Kaur)
and their 9 years old daughter Minoo, his friend Nahan Singh and
Nahan's wife were all burnt alive on the morning of November L This
sudden unbearable loss had nearly unhinged Surjit Singh's mind when
we saw him in the Camp.

(b) In Khajori-Bhajanpura (C Block)-Gamri area in Trans Yam-
una one xxxx, a prominent Congress-I leader of the locality who is a
Gujar by caste called a meeting on the night of3lst October which was
attended by his son xxxx, xxxx (kerosene depot operator), xxx (Prim*

18 RBPORT TO THB NATION : TRUTH AfiOUt OEUU VldLBNCi?

pal of a local school in Bhajanpura) and made an exhaustive list of
local Sikh families who were to be attacked on November 1 by them.
According to the Nanaksar Report "what happened thereafter was
sheer unspeakable horror. In a space of two and a half days among the
families who took refuge in Nanaksar, 155 people have been slaugh-
tered. These numbers, which are but from a single camp— make moc-
kery of ihe Government's estimates of the deaths in the Capital. 45%
of those killed were from Nandnagari, most of whom were from Block
A- 1/3, the Punjabi Mohalla and Block E. Gamri and Bhajanpura —
mostly C Block— accounted for another 30%. The dead left behind
them 107 widows, 72% from the ages 20-45 years."
(c) In Kallekhan Basti near Nizammuddin a meeting was held on
31st October nig/it over cups of tea and lasted till late at night. It was
presided over by a Congress-I elected leader and some gujars including
a well known Vaid-all Congress-I sympathisers attended it, finalising
their plan for November 1.

B. Political Organisers :

Throughout the Trans- Yamuna area and in the catchment area,
there were three types of people who were behind the-scene organisers,
those who identified Sikh households, mobilised hoodlums for may-
hem and supplied fuel for arson. According to the survivors, these
came from among (a) local level Congress I politicians and hoodlums
at different hierarchical levels, (b) ration shop owners and (c) kerosene
depot ovoers, who have invariably been members of the same party
or closely linked to local Congress-I politicians (Nanaksar Report).^

According to our Survey, not an insignificant proportion of vic-
tims (19 p.c.) and their neighbours (20 p c.) said that the attack was
motivated by Congress-I political leaders. And a higher proportion
of the victims (42 p.c) identified Congress-I sympathisers as assai-
lants.

Jt was reported that prominent among the people who were incit-
ing the mob to violence in Sultanpuri, one was xxxx a Congress-I func-
tionary and a close associate of xxxx. xxxx allegedly went round the
area later building up a climate of fear among the people by spreading
the story that the Sikhs had poisoned the water supply. He was
allegedly leading the attack. There was another one xxxx of the
Jamadars, xxxx a narcotic seller and xxxx.

Well dressed young men coming in Matador vans or cars or bu-
ses later identified as important functionaries of Congress-I or elected
leaders belonging to Congress-I, have been responsible for mobilising

k METHOD \ti THB MADNESS

and directing the mob towards Sikh houses, shops, factories and
Gurudwaras. Refugees from Patparganj, Khichripur, Kalyanpuri in
Pandav Nagar Gurudwara separately interviewed mentioned that a
cream coloured Matador (xxx) owned by one xxxx drove up to
Ganesh Nagar (Pandav Nagar Complex) carrying 12 men, one of
whom was xxxx, a Congress- 1 Councillor; they distributed to the
crowd assembled there lathis, revolvers and rifles — which they had
brought with them— and were heard telling them before leaving 'Use
these on Sardars'.

The list giving the names of these 12 men was given to Mr. H.K.L.
Bhagat, Union Minister, to Mrs. Tajedar Babar the Congress- 1 Metro-
politan Councillor and President of the Delhi Pradesh Committee of
Congress-I and also to Mr. Bedi, an official in the Ministry of Defence.
No action was taken against those named.

In Elwgal it was xxxx, a Congress-I worker and xxxx, owner of
a sweet-shop— a Congress-I sympathiser— who were seen directing the
crowd to Sikh shops in Bhogal Market which were all looted.

In Mongolpuri a white Ambassador was seen driving up near the
flyover near Mongolpuri. Sitting inside was xxxx, a prominent Cong-
ress-I man who had so masked his face as not to be recognised (but
he was recognised all the same). He called the the crowd to his car
and gave them some advice and then left; soon after that the Gurud-
wara went up in flames on the morning of November I,

In Vinod Nagar East two buses full of khadi kurta-pyjama clad
young men drove up from the direction of the UP Border and led the
local miscreants already assembled there, first to loot and burn Sikh
shops and houses and then to burn alive human beings; genocide was
perpetratea on November 1 in that small East Delhi colony. On 2nd
November, 35 lawyers had visited some riot-affected areas. Mr. Ram
Jethmalani's eye-witness account of the after-math of the Vinod Nagar
killings is given in Chapter IV on 'Nature of Violence.'

In Jehangirpuri, xxxx's name, a Congress-I local leader, has been
reported, it has come up again and again as the one who incited the
mob; once his henchman, xxxx had indentified the Sikh houses, he
prodded them on to loot and burn these down. That politics of
criminalisation was being played by the Congress-I functionaries has
been conclusively proved.

According to the affidavit of Gurdeep Kaur— "On November 1 in
Trilokpuri about 500 people came to Block 32. In such a crowd it was
not possible to recognise everyone. Since I have lived in Trilokpuri for
8 years now I did recognise a few of the mob who had killed my family.

26 R8PDRT TO TH6 NVTIOM : TRUTH Wit D3LHI VtOLBNdB

They were Tello, Manu (alleged to be a smuggler), Jagga and his wife
Draupadi, Kishori Jamadar (sells pork), Rampal Saroj (Congress-I
goooda who participated fully in looting and murder and also super-
vised the killing of several people), Roop Lai and his 3 sons who are
thieves. Rampal Saroj came to our lane and assured us that Sikhs
will not be harmed. He said there was no need to be afraid; being the
local leader he told the Sikbs not to get out of their houses because
that would be safer. I was shocked that this traitor had deceived us
and was a part of the mob. Rampal Saroj was leading the killers and
the assurance he had given us was just a trick of his so that no Sikh
would leave the house. Within 5 hours he brought the goondas, showed
them each Sikh household, saw to it that the Sikhs were pulled out,
and in his presence many Sikhs were beaten and burnt alive,"

C. Method of Identification :

Identification of Sikh shops and houses was done in a systematic
way by (i) persons moving in scooters, in Matadors, or even on foot as
if making a survey of the place; (ii) checking up names and addre-
sses of Sikh students from school registers; (iii) with the help of ration
cards and voters' lists; and (iv) by marking Sikh houses— Nazi fashion,
as in Hitler's Germany. Nanaksar Report mentions': "xxx and xxx the
owner of a shop which stands in the Bhajanpura Main Market, went
from door to door of Sikh houses in Khajori Colony, Gamri and
Bhajanpura marking them thus— X,S,(X), (S)— the houses were there-
by marked for arson, looting and murder".

D. Collection of Incendiary Material :

Kerosene was collected from

(i) Jhuggi dwellers (as in Nizammuddin Basti) by threatening
them,

(ti) Ration shop owners too willing to help,
(iii) Kerosene depot owners.

Nanaksar Report says: "Several sources jointly and individually
have pointed to xxxx, xxxx, xxxx and xxxx as the ones who supplied
kerosene by the bucket-ful on the 1st November. Further it was
strongly alleged that xxxx under order of xxxx also supplied phos-
phorous in the buckets of kerosene to aid the process of arson

(but who supplied phosphorous to xxxx ?) None of the witnesses

spoke of the "safed cheez" being handled, everyone said it was
in kerosene buckets and seen only when the kerosene was spilled
on to floors." This "white powder" was used in Jehangirpuri also.

A VtBTfctOD IM THE MADNESS

According to the survivors in Sultanpuri the, material used for arson
was kerosene, some sort of liquid which burns and also some kind of
powder which explodes or catches fire.

Diesel oil and petrol were collected from petrol pumps, passing
motor vehicles, cars and scooters.

E. Collection of the Mob :

(i) In Hari Nagar Ashram, miscreants, 400 to 500 strong, arrived
by Delhi-Palwal Shuttle Express from Faridabad at 9.45 A.M. and
also by Kutub-Narmada Express at 1 1 A.M., armed with lathis, iron
rods, soda-water bottles and drums of kerosene. They joined the Jocal
mob, 700 strong, who had come from nearby J.J. colonies.

These people were led by xxx, a Cohgress-I local leader followed
by bis friends xxxx, xxxx and xxxx. The mob now over 1000 strong
split in two, one group attacking the Bala Saheb Gurudwara, and the
second group the Shalimar area -the Sikh pocket.

(ii) In Jehangirpuri also the pattern of collection of the mob is
the same -neighbours as well as villagers from Balaswa, Ramgarh and
BadU.

(iii) In every Resettlement Colony 'outsiders' were brought in
buses from villages if they were far off, otherwise people came on foot
and joined the local people.

(iv) In Sultanpuri the mob came from nearby Pooth village
and some were bad character and local goondas from Blocks C-2, C-3,
C-4, C-6. All their names are with us. If and when called for they
would be produced.

(v) Inquiries in Punjabi Bagh and Madipur colonies involving
victims and looters, showed that the person leading the mobs were
those who were used by the ruling party to mobilise support.

The type of areas which the Lt. Governor identified at his Press
briefing on November 4, 198 J are similar to those from which crowds
were collected by the ruling party both for Ihe kisan rally three years
ago and the bank loans function in January 1984. It was Mongolpuri,
Sultanpurf, Trilokpuri and Kalyanpuri from where Congress-I politi-
cians found their crowds. "And it was Jehangirpuri where mobs killed
several persons of a minority community on suspicion that they had
not voted for the Congress-I in civic elections in Delhi in January
1983." (Statesman, November 5, 1984).

22 REPORT TO TfiB NATION : TRlffil ABOUT DEUll VIOLEfctCB

F. Composition of the Mob :

(i) Anti-social elements— some of them dacoits with police
record such as xxxx, xxxx, xxxx, xxxx, xxxx (a mob leader as well),
and so on. In JebaDgirpuri there are persons who are willing lo testify
against these people in court;

(ii) Scheduled castes— Khatiks, Chamars, Purbiyas, Jaraadars,
bhangis (there is a great deal of resentment against the bhangis, most
of whom rear pigs);

(iii) Backward castes— Jats, Gujars, Ahirs, most of them erst-
while land owners; their land was acquired by the Government for
setting up new colonies. They have become hostile to the Sikhs
because they live in tbese colonies.

Weapons used by them— in addition to iathis and iron rods,
daggers and axes were used extensively.

G. The Type of Killers:

Generally, Jat villagers from the outskirts, Jamadars, bhangis
and lumpens have been accused as killers by the survivors. The Con-
gress-! ring leaders paid Rs. 1000/- to each killer as boasted by the
killers themselves who invariably used to be heavily drunk before
killing. Some witnesses have accused some police men also of killing
as in Sultanpuri or in Bhogal. Even today, two and a half months after
the carnage, the refugees are afraid of three categories of human beings:
Gujars, police and politicians.

As mentioned in the Nauaksar Report: "xxxx in these colonies is
probably the most vicious of the killers— a general hoodlum of the
Gamri, Bhajanpura and Khajori area, a cla6s associate of xxxx, and
always carries a revolver; he not only planned but actively participated
in the killings and looting in Gamri and in C Block, Bhajanpura."
Another Gujar, xxxx doodwalla who supplied milk to Janata flat
No- xxx Nand Nagari killed the Sikh male in the flat.

Depending on the size of the mob, attacks were simultaneous or
sequential. Where the mob was very large, as in Hari Nagar Ashram
or again in Trilokpuri, it split into 2 groups and the pattern of simul-
taneous attack was observed; but where the mob was smaller, 1 50-250
persons, the pattern was sequential: taking it easy, first the Gurudwaras
were destroyed one after another and then the Sikh houses and shops
already identified were looted, and finally the Sikh men were humil-

A METHOD IN THE MADNESS

iatcd, their hair was cut, their turbans torn apart, then they were
brutally murdered and finally burnt down. This clever pattern leaves
very little doubt that the violence had been extremely well organised
by men who were experts at the game.

I. Repeated Visits:

To make sure if the victim was dead, the mob came back
repeatedly to the place of* violence like birds of prey. In Bhogal the
crowd came at intervals, first at 1 1 A.M., then at 2 P.M., to see if the
shops had burnt out. In Jchangirpuri also it returned to see if the
men who had been burnt were dead.

J. Slogaas:

Iu the over-all planning and organisation, the slogans had
a very important part to play and they were mainly 3 types used
all over Delhi.

The object of the slogans was to incite the people to take re-
venge by playing upon Mrs. Gandhi's greatness and the next moment
reminding them that she was dead.

Thus frenzied cries of :

'Indira Gandhi Zindabad',

'Indira Gaudhi A mar Rahe' and

•Jab tak sooraj-chand rahega

Indira tera naam rahega',
were followed by

'K.hoon ka badla khoon se Lenge'

and

'Sardaron ko jala do, Moot lo\ 'Sardaron ko mar do* and
"Hindu-bhai, Muslim-bhai
Sardaron ki kare safai".

*

The method of spreading rumours was subtle. It was done In
three phases.

In the first phase, on 3 1st October, only one rumour was
spread in the evening. Its sole intention was to arouse and incite
the spirit of revenge, which was otherwise being fed by the incessant
showing of the dead body of Mrs. Gandhi on the TV and the
continuous announcement of the community of the two killers.

The media even suggested the course of revenge when the voice
of the excited mob at Teen Murti came through clear and sharp in

24 REPORT TO THE NATION : TRUTH ABOUT DELHI VIOLENCB

the TV : 'Khoon ka badla khoon se" ("Blood for blood.")- "The
rumour was that Sikhs all over Delhi were celebrating Mrs. Gandhi's
assassination by distributing sweets, dancing the 'bhangra' and bursting
crackers as in Diwali. This spread like wild-fire though no body had
seen either the distribution of sweets, the dance or the Diwali illumi-
nation. Yet, all, even highly placed educated men and women
accepted the rumour as true and were getting furious.

In the second phase, on November I after the Gurudwaras had
been burnt down and a number of Sikhs burnt alive or hacked to
death, to prevent or remove any kind of sympathy and compassion
for them, three kinds of rumours were floated. People heard that
"every Gurudwara was an arsenal" and "weapons which were used by
the extremists were found under the Gurudwaras when they were
burnt down". However, in truth, no weapon was found in any of
the burnt Gurudwaras. The second rumour was more forcejul — after
the killings of Sikhs had been put into effect— that the "Sardars were
coming to attack armed with swords and that they were just round
the corner". This second rumour sprouted into several harmful rum-
ours—like 'Sardars will kidnap children', 'they will attack at night'— as
a result people became afraid of the Sikhs and parents living in several
bastis deposited their children and their few possessions in the houses
of their employees on November 2. In Chandhi Chowk, the police
were the author of an interesting slogan 'Raat Hamari, Din Tumhara'.
It might have been begun as a cynically humourous statement since the
police, being refused a share in a big Sikh jewellery shop, had broken
the safes in the Saraf Bazar and had helped themselves with cash and
jewellery; later this was twisted and was supposed to have been a
threat coming from the Sikhs— the meaning being clear. The third
and most dangerous rumour was spread on Novenfber 1 night, round
about 10.30, after the carnage was nearly complete in the central areas,
that the Sardars had poisoned the drinking water. Strangers rang
up to give the news and warned people not to drink or use the Cor-
poration water. This had a terrific impact and worked up even a
secular minded Hindu against his Sikh neighbour.

In the third phase, on November 2, when trains arrived in Delhi
with dead bodies of Sikhs, the rumour was spread that Hindus had
been killed in Punjab and that their bodies had been brought to
Delhi by the Jhelum Express from Punjab. It was necessary to sub-

A METHOD IN THB MADNESS

25

stitute the truth by fiction to keep up the anger against the Sikhs
because the extermination had not as yet been completed in the Reset-
tlement Colonies.

While analysing the sordid episode of this genocide, one sees an
invisible hand moving the pieces on his chessboard with remarkable
dexterity; the most powerful teader of the local ty calls the meeting,
allocates to different selected groups different duties— like identifica-
tion of Sikh houses, supervision and execution of the plan; determines
the size and the composition of the mob and the areas from where it
should be brought, settles the payment for each killing and most
important, decides on the sequence of the attack — the Gurudwaras
always being the first tai get It was a double-edged strategy. To the
killers, the Gurudwara was supposed to be the arsenal of the Sikhs
and so the precaution had to be taken to destroy it first. To a Sikh
the Gurudwara is the symbol of everything he stands for— his faith,
love, courage— once the Gurudwara falls, he falls with it. It was to
break him first morally, then physically— so also the Gurudwara was
attacked first everywhere and then he was murdered. The slog ns were
also selected meticulously and the rumours were carefully spread so as
to justify the carnage.

CHAPTER IV

Nature of Violence

What stunned every thinking person in the Capital this November
was not merely the spread and duration, the meticulous planning and
organisation of the violence and the controlled and instigated assault on
the Sikhs, but more, it was the very nature of the violence, its relentl-
essness, its unspeakable cruelty, the uninhibited sadism it displayed. It
is not unlikely that a large number of these human monsters who par-
ticipated in the crimes were similar to those who had been let loose a
few months ago on the people of Nagpur, creating a reign of terror
there. Many were the recipients of bank loans — the much-pampered
Congress-I thugs who are immune to discipline and having powerful
political patronage are still moving about freely; those who are sup-
posed to be the protectors of life and property of the citizens either
dare not touch them or are with them.

Ajit Singh, a survivor, resident of Friend's Enclave, Rajendra
Park, in a statement given to us in Gurumukhi has described how the
mob was determined to do violence and to kill. "I am doing service
in Delhi Cloth Mills. My son named Hari Singh (age 29 years) who
was a truck-mechanic was at home on 1 11.1984 when a mob of
1 50-200 persons armed with lathis, iron rods and bricks came here.
First they broke all the doors of the house. We all wtre sitting in the
room inside. On hearing the noise, we came out. Someone in the
mob said that if we cut our children's hair, they would not harm us.
As soon as the elder son came out, the mob attacked him on the head
with lathis and rods. He was injured and fell down. Then they kept
beating him. Then they attacked me and my wife. We were
seriously wounded. Then the mob took out our things and put them
over my son. Pouring the oil over the belongings, they set our son on
fire. Seeing this incident we fainted. When we returned to
our senses, the mob had retreated. Then 1 hid myself in neighbour's
house which was being constructed. Nobody was liviBg there,
Then I came out at the night of November 2.

JUTURIkOF VIOLENCE

27

On the afternoon of 2nd November, the mob had burnt the
household items in the room. My wife stayed at home and she
witnessed the entire incident helplessly."

Some recently widowed women in East Vinod Nagar narrated
to us how on November 1, two busloads of Congress — I men clad in
Khadi kurta and pyjama had come from UP border, ostensibly for
'Darshan', but walked down to the colony from the highway and led
the hoodlums already assembled there in arson and killing. The trail
of misery left behind by these men before they departed has been des-
cribed by Mr. Ram Jethmalani (Surya, November 1984) when he visi-
ted that area on November 2 with a number of Supreme Court
lawyers—:

"As we turned into Vinod Nagar an unidentified body was
lying across the road. A fewpassersby who were present informed
us that the body was of a Sikh who had been shaved and burnt with
kerosene and that he was a resident of Vinod Nagar. We made our
way into Vinod Nagar. Charred bodies were visible in the lane-
unmistakably of the Sikhs, the long hair had been cut and was lying
around the bodies; iron rods had been pierced through their backs and
they had obviously been burnt by kerosene or petrol. A male corpse
was lying in the verandah of every house. An inconsolable woman
with her child narrated how mobs of hundreds had entered her
house and despite all her pleas for compassion had killed and burnt
her husband, taken away her gold earrings and bangles and her
clothes, utensils and radio. The mob had come from the Resettle-
ment Colonies. Some of them were identified as belonging to the
Gujar.community— the violence was the work of outsiders who had

been manipulated to demonstrate their muscle power they were

instigated by the local Congress-I elements into a frenzy of resentment
and suspicion against the Sikhs."

i

The method of killing these men also was horrendous: crying,
their widows described the deeply moving tragic episode to
Jethmalani, "the mob while cutting their hair jeered and mocked at
them chanting 'mona mona mona'; they were ordered to keep dancing
while the mob laughed wildly; it threw kerosene at them and gloated at
their bodies burning, at the human being shrieking in horror and pain"

28 REPORT TO THE NATION: TRUTH ABOUT DELHI VIOLENCE

The killers must have been especially selected for they meant to
kill and came back again and agaiato verify if anyone was still alive.
Tn Nand Nagri men were^tlragged out, mercilessly beaten, their
heads shaved, beard sljprn, then as if it was a game of football, they
were dashed on tjje-ground and rolled in gutters, when nearly uncon-
scious they w*re tnrown into the flames to be be roasted alive like
pigs.

In some areas lighted slicks were held over their heads doused
in kerosene, and they burned like human torches. Sometimes the
methods of torture was changed and men died burning ignited limb by
limb,

According to Jog Singh of A-I Block Nand Nagari- 14-year old
apprentice in a factory manufacturing scooter-glass vacuum mirror,
who had escaped death but was severely burnt— described how cruelly
seventeen members of his joint family had been killed. Of the
seventeen, eight were children, one of them an infant 11 months old,
two women who were raped before being killed and seven men.
First their houses were stoned; since they did not come out, the mob
set fire to the house. When some came out and tried to escape they
were caught, and one of the men was thrown into the fire, he died—
burnt alive. The other six were beaten unconscious with iron rods;
then four of them still unconscious, but not yet dead, were stacked on
the seat and the floor of the rickshaw which was owned by the
man who had already been burnt alive. The other two were dragged
some distance with the help of ropes, one end of which was tied to
them, the other end to the rickshaw. Finally the rickshaw was set
ablaze alpngwith all the six men. In this Resettlement Colony the
kerosene depot owner supplied deisel, and the policeman who was
present there instead of controlling the mob instigated the crowd to
arson and murder; everywhere there were Congress-f men abetting
the killing. The weapons used were spears iron rods and lathis with
spikes attached to them.

In this colony the women were raped after the men were killed;
a young girl was gangraped and the brutes pushed an iron rod up her
vagina, she is still lying in a critical condition. In Nand Nagari there
were these rare instances where neighbours were killers. Two women
of this colony were involved in arson, looting and inciting the mob to
kill their neighbours. One of the women— a nurse of flat number xxx

Mature of violbncb

incited her nephews to kill residents of flat No. xxx and looted the
house with them. The other was xxxx who with her sons xxxx and
xxxx and her daughter and, daughters-in-law looted the houses of Sikh
residents and burnt them.

In Trilokpuri where practically the entire Block No. 32 was
wiped out, Vidya Kaur 30, (a pregnant woman who gave birth imme-
diately after the violent death of her husband) in her affidavit to Delhi
High Court which has already been filed in a writ petition, has nar-
rated how viciously the killers went about their business. For safety
her husband had cut his hair and as he was crossing over from the
terrace of the house where he had taken shelter earlier to another
neighbour's house -he when was recognised by Salim, a notorious
criminal of the area. "He crossed over to the terrace where my husband
was and forcibly dragged him to the adjoining terrace and beating him
pushed him down and the mob which had collected there with their
swords, knives, spears and iron rods and tins of kerosene fell on him
and poured kerosene on him and burnt him.... I rushed out towards
the street corner and to my horror saw the burning body of my hus-
band. Salim and several others I could recognise. Meanwhile the
mob was growing in size, marry were dancing in joy as they were
burning people live. Some were shouting: "Where are the fresh rats?
We will hunt them".

According to another victim Pratap Singh (28), who used to
run a provision store in Block 32, Trilokpuri,. and who was totally
blinded by the shower of iron rods on his head, the mob shouted :
'They want Khalistan— let us create Khalistan here !". The mob
closed the exit and entrance to the lanes and destroyed the Sikhs.

Gurdeep Kaur of Block 32/117 Trilokpuri also has in a writ
petition in Delhi High Court, described the horrifying nature
of the violence that destroyed her two sons, one son-in-law and
a nephew on the morning of November I. The mob broke open
the door of her house and pulled the 4 men out. Bhajan was hit
on his head by an iron rod and sprinkled with kerosene and
set on fire at the door; Man Singh was hit with a dagger and burnt;
Gulab who had managed to hide himself in a neighbour's house

with lathis, after which finding that he was still alive the mob

36 RBPORT TO THE NATION { TRUTH ABOUT DELHI VIOLBNcfe

electrocuted him.Her youngest son Pritam was hiding behind her. They
pulled him out and dragged him to Jagga's house where he was killed.
Before pulling him out, "the mob began pulling and tearing my
clothes and in a little while I was standing naked. After this - they
raped me in front of my son".

In Hari Nagar Ashram (Chapter 11 on "The Carnage") the man
was first dragged out, beaten up and his left thigh slashed off— the
stench of fresh blood had drawn the street dogs and in presence of the
gloating crowd they began to tear it and gobble up the flesh. The
man, in indiscernable pains was doused in kerosene and burnt
alive.

This was the nature of the violenee, unchecked and allowed to
be committed in the Capital on men whose fathers and brothers had
shed their blood and are still shedding for the defence of this country,
which is as much theirs as anyone else's.

•

A new diamension was added to the grim tragedy— killings on
railway trains. Every train to Delhi on Friday (November 2, 1984)
carried death. Scores of bodies were found in compartments
when the trains arrived and many more were burnt on railway tracks
and platforms on the outskirts of Delhi. (Statesman, November
3, 1984). Col. Anand's family did not know for several days that he
had been dragged out of the train and killed though he was in uni-
form. Surjit Singh of Trilokpuri, a young greaser in the Railways
never came back from Saharanpur where he had gone on duty; weeks
later his Hindu colleagues informed his anxious parents how he along
with three Sikh passengers had been pulled out of the train in Loni
Road, beaten up and burnt with deisel oil. Their bodies could never
be found. Sometimes bodies were discovered after days but never
returned to the relatives. This happened when the battered bodies of
Gyani Kuldip Singh and his son were found behind the AGCR's
office. In Palam village, people saw nine Sikhs dragged out of the
Ahmedabad Mail and hacked to pieces which were strewn all over the
railway line. Where was the railway police or the police incharge of
the Palam Thana? These are questions which every administration
which is still functioning or supposed to be functioning must answer.
And this leads us to examine the behaviour of the police and the role
of the administration during the violence.

CHAPTER- V

Police Lawlessness

Neither the general public nor the survivors have good
words to say about the behaviour of the police. Acts of
devotion to duty were few and far between and they did not
receive the support of colleagues. According to the replies to
our questionnaire by the victims and their neighbours in 19 riot
atrected areas of Delhi, 86 percent of the neighbours said that the
role of the police was very negative. A significant proportion (15 to
30 percent) among both the categories said that the police joined
the looting and killing. 54 percent of the victims said that no
response came from the police when they were contacted for help.

That the police had full knowledge of the carnage that swept
Delhi from the morning of November 1, is documented in the form
of FIRs lodged by the police themselves at various Police Stations
in the capital.

In Mongolpuri Police Station the first FIR was claimed to have
been registered on November, 1, 1984 at 1.30 p.m. under section 147/
148/149/302/307/395/397/427/436 I.P.C. as No. 174 (Annexure I) but it
was not sent to Mctropdlitan Magistrate immediately on the same
day as required under law. Instead it was sent on November 7.
This FIR lodged by Shri Rajinder Singh, SHO, Mangolpuri Police
Station, states that there was strong anger and resentment among
the residents of Delhi because of the cruel murder of Smt Indira
Gandhi, Prime Minister of India on October 31 by two of her Sikh
Security Guards. Therefore, on November 1 , mobs were gathering
at several places in Mongolpuri in defiance of the law, roaming about,
looting the houses, Gurudwaras, shops and properties of the Sikhs,
setting them on fire and killing the Sikhs. The Mongolpuri Police
Station had received reports of such violence from Block Nos. B. C,
D, I, J, Q and Avantika Colony. The SHO also stated in the FIR
that he would immediately require a gas squad, fire brigade and a
photographer and that is why he was sending the report immediately
to the concerned high officials through special messenger (a motor-
cycle-rider).

RBPOXT TO THE WIO* ! TRUTH ABOUT DELHI VIOLBNCB*

The following questions are relevant in this connection :—
L What kind of action and measures did the concerned police
officials take in order to control the extra-ordinary situa-
tion which they themselves noticed vide FIR No. 174
dated 1. 11. 1984 ?

2. Why was the police not able to mention the names of the
victims and accused in the said FIR ? Did the victims
refues to give such information ? And if they did give,
why were the criminals not immediataly arrested ?

3. What did they do to investigate the number of deaths and
incidents of loot and arson ?

4. Why did the police not send the copy of the said FIR No.
174 immediately to the concerned Metroplolitan Magis-
trate on 1.11. 1984 itself and why they sent the same to
him on 7. 11. 1984, inspite of the fact that in the said
FIR the police noted that the special report was being
immediately sent to the concerned higher officials by
special motorcycle rider ?

5. To which higher officials was the special report sent by
motorcycle rider raessanger and what action did they take ?

6. In the said FIR the SHO indicated the immediate need of
a gas-squad, fire brigade and photographer. Did he get
these ? And if he got, how and at what places was the
said gas squad used ? What kind of photographs did the
police photographer take and at which places ?

7. How is it that between 1. II. 1984 toll. 11.1984, the
Mongolpuri Police was able to rigister only three FIRS
i.e. FIRs No. 174 175, and 176?

8. And if the concerned police officials did not perform their
duties in the above matter as required under law, why
was no action taken against them under section 217 and
221 of the Indian Penal Code ?

(Section 217 and 221 IPC provide punishment for public
servants who intentionally disobey direction of the laws
to save guilty persons and intentionally omit to arrest
them.)

POLICB LAWLESSNESS

These questions are relevent for almost all the police stations
where such riots occurred. The various facts mentioned in this
report clearly show that the concerned police officials did not
conduct themselves as police officials but functioned as criminals,
and the government connived at their behaviour.

The FIR No. 176 (Annexure 2) at Mongolpuri Police Station is
dated 11. 11. 1984 which was lodged by one Shri Gurdip Singh, r/o
Q-6/118, JJ Colony. Mongolpuri, Delhi. In bis report Shri Gurdip
Singh has pathetically narrated how his two brothers Shri Kulwant
Singh and Shri Rattan Singh were dragged out from the house and
burnt alive on Its November 1984. He has also narrated how Smt
Davinder Kaur, wife of Shri Kulwant Singh was raped by the
miscreants. In his report he | has given the names and addresses of
the miscreants and the witnesses.

When we tried to contact Shri Gurdip Singh we found
that he had left Delhi for Punjab. We discovered that while
Shri Gurdip Shingh together with his family was in the Narang
Colony Camp near Janakpuri he made various repeated efforts to
get the police to apprehend the said miscreants who were roaming
freely in the locality. Instead of being apprehended the miscreants
were allowed to threaten and warn Shri Gurdip Singh and his family
of dire consequences. Shri Gurdip Singh saw no alternative but to
escape to Punjab with his farairay for safety. Now the fate of his
complaint can be well gauged. This is an example of what is
happening to similar complaints.

In fact, one of our members visited Narang Colony camp on
16.1.85 and several Sikh refugees showed him the copies of com-
plaints sent by them to the police in which they had mentioned the
names and addresses of the miscreants but still the said miscreants
were roaming around freely as no action was being taken against
them. Consequently these refugees were feeling apprehensive about
their own safety. It appeared from their faces as if they were living
in an alien land and not in their own country.

In Sultan puri Police Station, FIR Nos. 250 (Annexure 3) and
251 were lodged by the police themselves. FIR No. 250 is claimed to
have been registered on November \, at 3.45 p.m. while FIR No. 25J

34

REPORT TO TUB NATION t TRUTH ABOUT DELHI VIOLENCE

is dated November 3. Both these FIRs were, however, sent to the
concerned Metropolitan Magistrate on November 9. These FIRs are
similar to FIR No. 174 dated November I, 1984 of Mongolpuri Police
Sation and also speak of the intense anger and resentment of
the people of India over the cruel murder of Smt Indira Gaodhi
by two Sikh Security Guards and the consequent large-scale arson,

What is significant about the above FIRs lodged by the police
themselves is that none of them mention any names of suspects or
criminals as a FIR should. It is most likely that they were filed
much after the incidents, so as to cover up the gross negligence of
the police This would explain why the FIRs reached the relevant
Metropolitan Magistrates so late, in some cases after a week.

In Kalyanpuri Police Station, two FIRs Nos. 422 and 423.
were lodged by the police on November 1, 1984. The first was lodged
at 1.30 p.m. and received by the concerned Metropolitan Magistrate
on November 3 at 5.30 p.m. The FIR No. 422 was lodged by some
constables who were on p Urol duty at the Pandav Magar Bus Stop.
According to them, two or three Sikhs were indulging in argument
with one non-Sikh at 1.30 p.m. on Nevember 1 in front of Patparganj
Road. The non-Sikh was telling the Sikhs that they had killed "our"
Prime Minister and, therefore, the people would take revenge on them.
At this the Sikhs are reported to have become angry and shouted
loudly that they would finish everyone who would try to damage
their Gurudwara. Soon there were heated arguments. A large number
of Sikhs and non-Sikhs began to assemble and then the two groups
attacked each other. Inspite of the best efforts, reportedly of the
duty constables, they could not control the angry mobs who started
arson, burning and looting. The constables lodged the FIR seeking
more help to control the crowd. FIR No. 423 also speak of general
violence. It is significant that neither of these FIRs speak of any
killing.

That the police were negligent in carrying out their duty and
in giving due protection to the life and property of Sikhs is clearly
revealed by FIR No. 425 lodged at Kalyanpuri Police Station on
November 2, 1984 by the Assistant Police Commissioner of the area.
The ACP complained against the SHO of Kalyanpuri Police Station
and two of his colleagues, the duty officer and the motor-cycle
rider, that these three policemen were witness to the spate of

KH.ICB lawlessness

35

incidents of loot, arson and killings on November 1 and 2 in Blocks
32 and 34 of Trilokpuri. That the victims informed the police
about the violence and sought protection from them. However, the
SHO, so the complaint ran, failed to give any protection to the
lives or property of the Sikhs, did not inform any senior police
officials about the incidents, did not register any case against the
criminals who had indulged in arson and killings and also did not
make any arrest. Hence, the ACP lodged the FIR against the
SHO under Sections 217/221 of the Indian Penal Code for not
making any arrangement for saving the property of the Sikhs in this
area.

The above FIR is significant because it is not only a clever
attempt to cover up the inhuman and brutal negligence on the part
of Delhi Police in general, but also it is a clear attempt to find some
scapegoats in the Jower-nmg of the police hierarchy for the criminal
neglect displayed by the top police officials as also the political leader
ship. On enquiry one of the suspended police officials informed that
the lower officials had duly sent such reports of the incidents within
time to highir officials, and they were merely made scapegoats lo
cover up the negligence of their superiors.

The least damaging comment on the police can be that they
were "silent spectators" when gruesome killing or burning of Guru-
dwaras or looting of houses and shops were taking place. In Sultan-
puri, on the morning of November 2, when the mob set ablaze every
house in Block C-4 and started beating and burning the male Sikhs,
the police officers waited in the nearby lanes but did not come to
their rescue.

But were they really mere "silent spectators"— just apathetic,
neutral ? We shall quote a few instances of their active involvement
in different areas of the capital— such as Sultanpuri, Jehangirpuri,
Trans-Jamuna, Dayanand Colony (Lajpat Nagar), Trilokpuri, East
Vinod Nagar and New Delhi.

SULTANPURI: The Sultanpuri SHO, accused of torturing
Wilson, the balloon seller of F-7 jhuggis, who subsequently died,
was no "silent spectator" when he rushed to C-3 Block to disarm
the Sikhs and arrest them as they were resisting the attack of a
huge mob which had already allegedly burnt the Granthi alive. A
to have shot down the Pradhan of the

36

REPORT TO THE NATION : TRUTH ABOUT DELHI VIOLtNCE

community while two other constables are reported to have actively
participated in the murder.

JEHANGIRPURI : In Jebangirpuri, on the morning of
Nevember 1 the police were heard by the victims, saying "Tumhare
paas chbattis ghante hain. Jo karna hai, kar lo" ("You have 36
hours. Do whatever you wish to do"). Some victims and neigh-
bours in 'K' block, Jehangirpuri, testify to the active role of the
police in burning down the 'K' Block Gurudwara.

TRANS-YAMUNA (from Nanaksar Report) (I) The Officer of
the Yamuna Puri/Yamuna Vihar Police Station went to C- Block,
Yamuna Vihar around 4 or 4.30 p.m. on November 2, and told the
mob that it had the rest of the evening and the night to kill the
remaining Sikhs.

(2) The police officials of the Khajori Police Station who
told the mobs early morning on November 3, that they had 3 days
to kill the Sikhs, but not still completed the job.

(3) On November 1, four policemen on duty in Garari told a
large crowd at around 1 1 a.m. that they had 2 days to finish all the
Sikhs or else the Sikhs would finish them.

(4) When the Army entered Vijay Park, Maujpur, looting was
going on. In the mob were three polieeraen from the Seelampur
Police Station.

(5) On ihe morning of November 4, another police official
of the Yamuna Vihar Police Station took a group of thugs to a
house in Khajori Colony. He broke open the lock on th; pretext
of searching for weapons and then allowed those hoodlums to loot
the house.

LAJPATNAGAR: While 26 Sikhs were rushing to the
Dayanand Colony Gurudwara on the morning of November 1,
for protection against a 500 strong mob, chanting slogans, 4 police-
men were instigating the mob when they burnt down the Guruda-
wara. These policemen were heard saying, "Delhi is burning, and
what are you doing ?"

TRILOKPURI : The police came, peeped in the homes in
Block 30 and left. "Whenever people complained about killings
for protection" writes Vidya Kaur in her affidavit, "'they asked us
not to worry. Later the police directed the mob to where the
Sikhs were hiding." "Ous ghar main Sardar chipe hai, nikal bahar
karo" (Sardars are hiding in that home, drag them out). The mob

P6UCB LAWLESSNESS

continued pelting stones and hurJed abuses-'We will rape their
women'. Some women addressed them as brothers and begged them,
to spare them, they said in front of the police, "wc are not your
brothers. We are yours husbands. We will kidnap you tonight,"
and so they did. The number of young women missing is very large ;
the police so far have not been able to trace them.

On the flyover joining Bhogal to Ashram— 20 policemen just
sat on, looking, when six Sikhs were beaten to death.

IN EAST V1NOD NAGAR ALSO When the anti-socials first
began to assemble in the early morning of November 1, one of the
residents who bad hidden her neighbours and saved their lives, said,
that suddenly some police men turned up ; seeing them the mob was
on the point of retreating when the police called them back and
said "Why arc you going back ?" Encouraged, (he whole lot of them
returned and waited for the Congress (U leaders to arrive by bus.

NEW DELHI : In the case of a Sikh taxi driver killed in the
house of DMKP Leader, Ram Bilas Paswan, the Patriot (November
2) reported that after the crowd set fire to the house and the garage,
"a few minutes later a jeep packed with policemen came down the
road and the 'guardians of the law', instead of controlling the situa-
tion, cheered and exhorted the men and sped away."

Were the police always present either when things were
happening and people were asking for protection 7 Did they not
quietly disappear when to quote only one instance, the mob was
surging forward to destroy the Trilokpuri Gurudwara in Block 36 ?
In some of these settlement colonies, violence continued for over
48 hours, the attackers came back again and again to verify if the
houses bad been reduced to ashes, if the burnt man was actually
dead. In Sultanpuri after the first attack on November 1, at 3 p.m.
on the Gurudwara in A-4 and the killing and burning of the Granthi
and of other male members, the mob came back again next morning,
and those who survived were killed in a subsequent attack. Would
such verifications and constant visits by hundreds of hoodlums have
been possible if the police had been there ? But sometimes their
presence helped the criminals as it did in Sultanpuri where along
wiih the criminals the police removed the bodies of the dead and
every evidence of the crimes. The bodies were not handed over to
the relatives— all their requests were refused. It is still not known

38 RBtORT TO THB NATION ! TROTH ABOUT DBLHI VIOLENT

-

how their bodies were disposed of. These actions were taken deli-
berately, in order to minimize the number of dead reported to the
public.

On Thursday, November 1, Shri M.M K. Wali, the then Home
Secretary who is now Delhi's Lt. Governor, said that the number of
people dead in the country was 10 of which 5 were in Delhi (Times
of India, 2nd November). On that day police sources put the
figure at 35 killed in the East District or Delhi alone. (Indian
Express, 2nd November). On Thursday itself Shri Wali is reported
to have expressed confidence that by Friday evening, Novembe 2,
the situation would be brought under control. He was of the view
that passions roused get spent in two days. (Indian Express, 2nd
November). On Sunday, November 4, Shri Wali said, "the situation
is much better. I hope it will be totally controlled by the night."
On being pressed he gave the official figure as being -.58 dead. That
day, the mortuary had taken on a grisly appearance with bodies piled
high on four trucks after the tpace inside was filled (Statesman, 5th
November). Shri Wali said on Monday, Noucmber 5, that the
Press was giving exaggerated accounts of the death toll and incidents
but on November 6, he announced the number of the deaths to be
599 (Patriot, 7th November). On November 11, however, the
Hindustan Times published a tabic giving the official number of those
killed in Delhi as 325.

The exact figure of the dead will never be known— all that one
can see is the disconsolate widows whose number is not less than
1300 and 4000 desolate orphans.

But perhaps the cooperative, rather protective and encouraging
attitude of the police vis-a-vis the criminals has some logical explan-
tion— such as unwritten orders from their political patrons to give
green signals to the miscreants to go ahead and then give them
support. "Whether there were political instructions not to imple-
ment curfew restrictions imposed on Friday, November 2, in earnest
to allow the 'darshan' at Teen Murli or not is unclear", commented
the Statesman (3rd November), but the general consensus among
public, everywherc-cspecially after the non-implementation of the
curfew order and the shoot-at-sight order— was that 'Saikai kara
rahi hain' ('the Government is behind this violence') while the mis-
creants were openly bragging "Police hamate saalh hai" ( The police
is with us'). Even the 'deployment' of para-military forces of the

Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and the Border Security
Force (BSF) announced by the Government on Wednesday evening
were no where to be seen. "I have called CRPF and BSF control
rooms every 10 minutes", said a duly officer at the Nizamuddin
Police Station, "but each time 1 am told that there is nothing that
can be done." Indian Express, November 2).

So everything was done leisurely— the killing, the arson, the
looting ; liquor flowed like water, tea was served to the 'vigilant'
police silting on their stools, jokes were shared, there was a lot of
laughter and glee, trucks came and went loaded with booty— des-
patcheJ unhurriedly to safe places— car loads of well-dressed men
stopped for a while to supervise if things were going according to
plan. To a real 'silent spectator' walking helplessly it was like a
slow motion shooting of a gory film.

It will be only fair" to quote an important police officer (name
not to be mentioned) lhat whenever instructions were sought for
from above, there was silence. There was one lone police officer in
Pandav Nagar called Vinod Sharma whose name was mentioned with
deep gratitude by the relatives of victims ; and because he had
behaved. as a police officer is expected to, he was summarily removed.
The fact that 20 percent of Delhi Police-who happened to be Sikh-was
removed and locked up during the entire period of the violence, was
a clear indication to the police of Delhi how to deal with the Sikhs.
The execuse for this action was thai the Sikh police-men were not
safe, hence it is for their safety ihey had been put away. This brings
to mind the 'police protection that had been ordered for Jaiprakash
Narain ; wherever he went— even when he was in his own house-
the police had to be there "to protect' him from the 'hostile people'.

There is no disputing the fact that ihe administration
had collapsed during that period : the emergency telephones calling
the police and the (ire brigade never replied ; the looting went on un-
checked ; the power connection had been cut off in Trilokpuri so that
the women could be raped in darkness, no D£SU man could be con-
tacted to set the line right ; there was none in the Delhi Municipal
Corporation's Water Supply Office to reply to .anxious questions jf
the water had really been poisoned ; shops and markets remained
closed all the 4 days ; in several localities no milk was available, nor
bread ; even as it is Delhi has been a very unsafe place especially for
women but these days wilh hundreds of bad characters roaming

-

46 RBPORT TO TUB NATION S TRUTH ABOUT DBLHI VlOLBNfifi

around with no policemen in sight there was a feeling of instability
and grave insecurity even if he was a Hindu belonging to the majority
community. It was total chaos.

One shudders to think what would have happened if some
wicked foreign power had chosen any of those days to attack Delhi -
the capital of India.

The police Commissioner having all the powers under the
statute to pass orders for shooting down miscreants, stood helplessly
by like any civilian and saw the big Gurudwara in Sadar Bazar
burning. Distressed, when he rushed to consult the Lt. Governor of
Delhi, this high official could not summon necessary courage to
impose curfew and waited till Rajiv Gandhi gave his clearance-
According to the Statesman, a proposal to impose curfew in the city
was made shortly before noon ; until 6 p.m., Thursday, November
1, no decision was taken because no decision could be taken unless
cleared by Mr. Rajiv Gandhi (The Statesman, November 3).

The people have been realising with a sudden shock the rot
that had set in during the last 10 years and the depth of the damage
in the system of our administration. When the one person alone
holds the reins of control and all power is concentrated in one hand
and nothing is expected to move wilhout orders coming from that
one source of power, it is only natural that the vast and expensive
machinery of the Government should get rusted, and there would be
a total degeneration in the system of governance which has become
an abnormal monolith.

It did not require a seasoned administrator to realise that day
that priority demanded the presence of the largest possible contingent
of police force in those localities where there was anarchy and not in
front of the Teen Murti House in such numbers. It is also worth
noting (Patriot, November 1) that "one Army brigade consisting of
8000 men and another 1000 personnel from the Navy and Air force
were to line the route o. the funeral." So there was no shortage of
cither army or police personnel. But only a three-men police force
arrived in the secluded colony of Trilokpuri around 6 p.m. on
November 2, despite repeated information of the carnage to the
authorities. It could do little to dispel the palpable menace in the
air. (Indian Express, November 3).

POLICB LAWLESSNESS

41

It was not the police constables alone, all the high officials
from the Commissioner of Police to the ACPs were concentrated in
the Teen Murti House.

At Thursday's wireless log, Police Commissioner Mr. Subhash
Tandon's day was spent at the following places— Teen Murti
Bhavan, Police Headquarters, Raj Bhawan and back to Police Hqrs.
(The Statesman, November 3). While the Additional Police Commis-
sioner, Mr. Gautam Kaul, was at Teen Murti till about noon —
borne out by the log book as well as Doordarshan Cameras. In
the afternoon be visited Gurudwara Rakabganj and the house of a
colleague attacked by a mob in Mahadev Road. In the evening he
attended meetings. (The Statesman, November 3).

That going round the troubled city— particularly visiting again
and again the far flung Resettlement Colonies— was an integral part
of the Police work which was totally forgotten. The capital was
virtually handed over to the goondas, the mafias and the criminals-
it was their raj for full 4 days.

CHAPTER VI

Was It a 'Communal' Riot ?

Nearly two months and a half after the holocaust, one can
assert with confidence that unlike the Calcutta killing of 1946 and
the killing during the partition of the country, the recent killing in
Delhi vvas not the outcome of communal hatred. It has, indeed,
brought out the worst ia certain human beings after they had been
instigated ; but it has clearly and spontaneously brought out the
finest in others.

On the evening of November 1, one of our members went to
Lajpat Nagar-11 to inquire about one of his Sikh friends. When
he tried to enter Lajpat Nagar from the Defence Colony side, he saw
barricades and some youngmen at the entrance who did not allow
our member to enter the colony. There were some burnt vehicles
and shops. On persuation, those youngmen allowed our member to
enter. When our member moved in a lane on left side, he saw two
Sikhs moving about freely, among others. He inquirrcd from one
Sikh as to what was the situation there. The Sikh replied there were
some lootings anil burning in the main market and on the main
roads in the morning and all the residents were bewildered and con-
fused upto afternoon as they did not know from where and how the
outsiders came and committed all the mischief. But since afiernoon
the residents, all Hindus and Sikhs together, had organised themselves
into joint defence committees and had decided not to allow any
outsider inside the colony or do any mischief. Our member then
went to the house of his Sikh friend who told him that the miscreants
had tried to enter the colony but the residents had repulsed them
with joint efforts. He further told our member that the Hindu
youngmen he saw at the entrance were members of the joint defence
committee and were guarding the colony.

The above instance was not a solitary one. Furiher investiga-
tion revealed that such joint defence committees had spontaneously
sprung up in various localities. These acts of communal harmony
and courage were not few, as The times of India dated November 3 ;
1984 rightly reported i

was rr a 'communal' riot ?

43

"RAY OF SUNSHINE IN DARKNESS"
"...Hindus in colony after colony decided to form their
own protection squads against the gangs of plunderers that
were running amuck.

"Disgusted at the utter failure of the police and the govern-
ment to protect the lives and properties of innocent Sikhs.
Hindus assured their Sikh neighbours that they had nothing
to fcnr and patrolled the areas throughout the night.
"Some of the colonies where such squads were formed were
in Tilak Nagar, Hari Nagar. Shiv Nagar and Janalcpuri in
West Delhi.

"There was an ironical situation that developed around B-2
block of Safdarjang Enclave last night when two volunteer
groups from the Janata colony nearby .almost clashed with
one anolher mistaking one anolher to be hooligans. Both
groups were patrolling the areas armed with lathis. Some of
the men wore scooter helmets. But just as they were about
to attack one another, some CRPF men on duty at the spot

raised their guns to fire. Tt was then that the groups realised
that thsy had the same aim of protecting houses and shops

from des'>erate raiders.

"ORGANISFD GANGS :
"Irate residents, both Hindus and Sikhs told reporters that
none of the people who attacked their houses and shops
seemed to be from their own colonics. In fact they were
not even of communal nature. They seemed to have only one
objective— that of looting their establishments. The
plunderers looked the type of people who lived in villages
and resettlement colonies and were highly organised.
"In fact their operations seemed to be so well planned out
that they knew exactly which shops and houses in a parti-
cular colony were owned by Sikhs and, what is more, even
which vehicles. As soon as residents got over the initial
shock of the attacks and realised that the police could not be
relied upon at all despite all the assurances that were being
broadcast both on All India Radio and Doordarshan they
decided to protect the Sikhs themselves.
"In the government colony of Sadiq Nagar where some
petrified Sikh families had shut themselves up, Hindus went

44 REPORT TO THE NATION t TRUTH ABOUT DELHI VIOLENCB

over to their houses to reassure them and offered them food.
"A Sikh who went over to a West Delhi colony to rescue his
'niece' was absolutely stunned when he found that a group
of Hindus belonging to a particular party was already
protecting her. They told him to let her stay there as she
was secure."

The report gave further description of similar activities in
various other colonies.

A team of Supreme Court advocates including V.M. Tarkunde,
Ram Jethamalani, Soli Sorabji, Ranjan Dwivedi and others visited
five affected colonies of Trans- Jamuna on November 1 and 2. In
all the localities the neighbours of the victims told the same story—
that they wanted to save and protect their Sikh bretherns but were
helpless against the highly organised mobs having superiority in
number.

In Kalkaji, Hindu and Muslim neighbours helped in salvaging
valuables from the burning gurudwara because they all respected it
as a place of worship. Thousands of Sikhs have been saved by their
Hindu friends at the risk of their being killed and their own houses
being set on fire by the threatening mobs.

It is interesting that the poorest of the poor, the much maligned
jbuggi-jhopari dwellers, at the request of the Sikhs, kept with them in
safe custody some of the articles which could be salvaged after the
burning of Sikh houses. With the renewed rumours of outbreak of
violence before the election-day they asked the Sikhs to remove
those articles elsewhere as they felt they were marked men and
this time the goondas would attack them andjeverything saved would
be lost.

According to replies to the questionnaires sent to neighbours
in 19 different affected areas of Delhi 72 percent said that the first
news of the violence they received was that Sikhs were being attack-
ed ; 58 percent of them tried to contact their Sikh friends and
neighbours ; a similar percentage (59 percent) of the neighbours said
that they tried to help the Sikhs in various ways and suffered threats
in the process. 34 percent gave them shelter in their own houses,
28 percent provided food, medicine, clothes etc., 12 percent of the
neighbours contacted, visited relief camps and organised peace
committees, another 12 percent informed the police about the

WAS IT A 'COMMUNAL' RIOT ?

violence. 68 percent of the victims questioned 'said that their
neighbours came to their rescue.

In several refugee camps all the survivors said that (he violence
was not communal but, many said, that it was instigated. To our
question if he felt it was a communal violence, Jeet Singh— a survivor
in the Pandav Nagar Gurudwara who had lost everything and every-
one excepting his little son-simply said, "No, no, not communal, a
Brahmin couple has taken my little boy to live with them. In
Janakpuri camp an old man said, "It was the local bad characters or
in many cases political workers who pointed the houses and property
of our community. (Statesman, November 4, 1984). Some would say,
"'My mother was Hindu, or "my brother has married a Hindu"
or "m one family, we have Hindus and Sikhs. All these people had
completely ruled out the riot as communal.

In Trilokpuri-one of the worst-hit areas— it was the 5 Muslim
houses in block 32 which stood as buffer between the killers and the
Sikhs and it was Kadir, a Muslim, who saved the life of Joginder
Singh (See Chapter II) at a great personal risk. In Vinod Nagar
East also it was a Hiraachal Pradesh Hindu who dragged the taxi
driver and his kids out virtually from the jaws of death. It was
again a brave Hindu woman being completely alone, who hid her
neighbours so cleverly and with such presence of mind that the mob
which entered her house in search of the Sikhs and examined the
photographs of her husband and daughter to verify that she herself
was not a Sikh, could not find there prey and left but came again
and again to check up but failed every time. The tension she had
gone through was clear on her face, but to her joy the people she
had saved were all sitting aroun her. All such instances of neighbourly
compassion made a veteran Police Officer remark, "in true communal
riot, the neighbours would have taken part. Thousands would have
died. There is mOre looting than killing." About looting there is
an interesting observation by another Police Officer, "Achha mal sab
upar, Baki dikhane ke liye" (The good stulf goes upstairs. The rest
is put on display). The connection between the upar (above) and
niche (down below) becomes clear from the following episode report-
d by the Indian Express. "Over 300 people suspected to have
looted-the property have been rounded up by the General district
police. The Congress-I leaders including the local M.P., Mr. Dharm
Das Shastri came to the Karol Bagh Police Station to protest against
the police action." (Indian Express, November 6, 1984).

46 RBPORT TO THB NATION ! TRUTH ABOUT DELHI VIOLBKCB

Some would concede— "Yes, there were Hirdu neighbours
who pointed us out to the killers, scire looted and burnt our houses.
But they did that not because tley weic Hindus or Muslims and we
were Sikhs. They wanted our things— radios, videos, watches or
some foreign gadgets some of us had."

One of the characteristics of a con.munal riot is that it micht
flare up suddenly on some small pretext but it never stops as sudden-
ly as the violence in Delhi did. No one on earth can control inflamed
passions of hatred once they begin to rage in human hearts or stop
two or more warring communities from drawing blood ; even when
the intensity of the riot gets less it never completely subsides, and
erupts sporadically in some corner or other for days together and
takes its own time to die down. Secondly, no communal riot is one-
sided. In the Delhi violence, the Sjkbs handed over their kirpans
and knives to the police officers both in Sultanpuri as well as
Mongolpuri : as a result they were butchered— completely defenceless
as they were returning home from the thana They themselves gave
their weapons, all in good faith, to their neighbours in Trilokpuri
who had visited them late on 31st October night to advise them not
to take out the Prabhat Pheri next morning. All knew that was one
of the essential features of observing Guru Nanak's birthday. Those
man were slaughtered next morning with those very kripans and
knives. Whenever they have tried to defend themselves or protect
their gurudwaras. they were either killed or arrested on the plea that
they were indulging in communal behaviour. What were the weapons
for — if not to be used for self-defence !

That the violence did not take a communal turn was not
because of lack of effort to give it that colouring. All the rumours
were directed to that end. Those who have been striving after a
Hindu Rashtra were active. There was a letter from Hindu
Suraksha Samity dated 27 October ^984 addressed to "Dear
Sardaron" which was shown to a volunteer by an important person
of the Balasheb Gurudwara ; it held out the threat of forcible shav-
ing of head and beard so that Sikh might be converted into Hinduism
as a retaliation for shooting down the Hindus in Punjab. There was
the story narrated to us by some distinguished Sikh families in M.G.
High School Camp of the eerie voice exhorting all Hindus to 'arise,
awake and kill" (Utho, jago, maro) every midnight iri Shivaji Park
area weeks before the violence erupted.

WAS IT A 'COMMUNAL' RIOT ?

47

But after the Violence, these votaries of communab'sm— though
few in number— may claim some success. For example, in the walled
city, looting and burning of shops did take place on the main roads,
but the houses, the shops and families of the Sikhs remained intact
inside the mohallas and lanes. However, our members noted with
heavy heart that soon after the riots, heavy iron doors were imme-
diately constructed at the entrance of every mohalla or lane which
opened at the backside of Gurudwara Sisgunj in -Kinari Bazar,
Chandni Chowk. The mohallas in Dariba also put up iron gates. On
the other hand, the backside wall of Gurudwara Sisgunj, which used
to be only six feet high before the riots, rose to about 14 feet high
soon after. No wonder, our government seems to be quite adept
in promoting disharmony, disunity and disintegration.

As if all. these were not enough, the highly communal Congress-

I advertisements were issued against, the Sikhs. These might satisfy
the Hindus longing for a Hindu Rashtra and capture some Hindu
votes— but they might also light the flame of a true communal
frenzy.

ANNEXURE— 1

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ANNEX URB 49

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feriT-Ul.84

ANNEXURE — 2

FIRST INFORMATION REPORT

FIRST INFORMATION OF A COGNIZABLE CRIME REPOR-
TED UNDER SECTION 154, Cr. P.C.

Police Station : Mangol Puri Distt. West

No. 176/84 : Date and hour of occurrence : 1.11. 84 at 6.20 p.m.

1. Date and hour when reported D.D. No. 18, d/1 1.1 1.84 at

6.20 p.m.

2. Name and residence of infor- gj|FV afR^ ^ft^ &(Vl%t ga?5p|>T
mant and complainant. anfSRPT «n*rr THF $ *ftffif

«ptpt jr^ta fa??, ft. n^.
6/ 1 1 8 ^r^-ffY, wnta^ft,
1^1

3. Brief description of Offence
(with section) and of pro-
perty carried off, if any.

4. Place of occurrence and dis-
tance from Police Stn.

5. Name and address of Crimi-
nal.

6. Steps taken regarding investi-
gation explanation of delay
in recording information.

7. Date and time of despatch
from Police Station.

u/s 147/148, 149/302, 307/
395, 427/276 P.C.
25/27, 54/59 A. Act

3T5T ?TPTT

No Delay

By special messenger

Signed : Sant Ram 9.25 Designation : HC/Duty

Metropolitan Magistrate

FIRST INFORMATION TO BE RECORDED BELOW

NOTE : The signature or seal or thumb impression of the informer
should be at the end of the Lnformotion and the signature
of the writer of (FIR) should be existed as usuaj,

JmNBXUfcB

The Deputy Commissioner of Police, West, SH, Tilak Nagar,
New Delhi-18 subject : Penal action against persons involved or
directly responsible for the murder of Shri Kulwant Singh and
Rattan Singh, r/o Q 6/119 Mangolpuri, J.J. Colony, Delhi -83 and
rape of Mrs. Davinder, w/o Shri Kulwant Singh on 1.11.84. Sir,
my two brothers late S. Kulwant Singh and S. Rattan Singh were
murdered by the following persons on 1.11.84 at exft of our house
No. Q. 6/119 J.J. Colony, Mangolpuri, Dilhi— 83, in the presence of
mine and of Smt. Gurmit Kaur and Smt. Davinder Kaur. We are
the witnesses of these heinous crimes (1) Kalia, scooter driver, Gali
No. 6, H. No, Block Q, Mangolpuri, New Delhi— 83, (2) Suma Ram
Kerosene Oil Depot Holder, Qu. No. 10, Block O, Mangolpuri,
Delhi-83, (3) Shankar, G:ili No. 7, Block, Mangolpuri, Delhi-83,
(4) Shambhu and his brother whose name not known but can be
identified and run a tea shop in. market 2, Block Q, Mangolpuri,
Delhi-83, (5) Two persons whose father is a vegetable vender and
resides in Gali No. 8, Block Q. Mangolpuri, whose names not known
but can be identified, (o) Govardhan, Gali No. 4, Block Q, Mangol-
puri, Delhi-83. All the above mentioned persons attacked us with
arms, dragged my brothers, one by one outside the house, attacked
them and after inflicting grevious injuries to these persons, poured
kerosene oil or some other iuflamable and burnt them alive. Apart
from these henious crimes. Shri Shanti who runs a tador shop in
Gali No. 5, Block O, Mangolpuri, accompanied by 4 other persons
whose names are not known but can be identified by the victim
Smt. Davinder Kaur, w/o Kulwant Singh, criminally assaulted
Smt. Davinder Kaur, on so far as Smt. Davinder Kaur is concerned,
she herself and a number of ladies in whose presence this crime
was committed can give their evideuce. Shrimati Davinder
Kaur was criminally assaulted by these people under duress
and threat of murder. I am a responsible social and religious
minded person. I have been the President of Gurudwara Shri
Govind Singh Sabha, R— Block, Mangolpuri, for the last five
years. I, therefore, have made this written statement with full
responsibility and with all the sincerity to Law as I have been
throughout my life a law-abiding person. I, therefore, pray that
case under appropriate criminal act be registered against these
people and their arrest be immediately effected to meet the ends of
justice. Thanking you, Yours faithfully, sd/Urdu (Gurdip Singh),
R/o H. No. Q-6, J. J. Colony, Mangolpuri, DJhi-83 Dated 1 1/11/84

52

ANNEXURB

Duty Officer, P. S. Mangolpuri : Please register a case u/s 147/148
149/302/395/397/436/427/376, PC, 25/27,54/59 A. Act and invest-
igation be entrusted to Shri Madan Lai : sd/English, R. S. Dahiya,
SHO, M. Puri, Dated 1 1/1 1/84 at 6.20 p.m.

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54 ANNEXXJRB

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